Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia's last independent newspapers, shuts down on 9 November

Closure on Monday, 9 November

Novaya Gazeta stops operating on Monday, 9 November 2026, ending more than 30 years of independent reporting in Russia. Its staff announced the decision in a statement published on 30 October, saying they would switch off the lights in the office they had occupied for three decades, shut down the servers and leave. The statement's Russian headline reads 'They have killed us', a phrase the staff chose to sum up what they see as the paper's fate. The landlord has terminated the lease, and the building on Potapovsky lane in Moscow is to be locked to the paper from Tuesday, 10 November. The last boxes are due to leave the building on Monday, including items from a small Anna Politkovskaya museum that had occupied her former office.

Pressure that built up

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the paper was barred from printing by any means and stopped its print edition that year. It kept reporting online, but its internet resources were restricted, it was removed from the media register, and its journalists were labelled 'foreign agents' and prosecuted. In September, the entire editorial office received the foreign agent designation, which El País called an administrative assault. Searches were carried out at the newsroom and at the home of editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov, and the system readers used to donate was switched off. Staff feared the paper could be classified as an 'extremist organization', which would expose anyone still working there to prison, so they met on 26 October in the basement of a neighbouring building because they suspected their office was bugged.

Six journalists killed and a Nobel laureate

El País and n-tv report that six of the paper's journalists and contributors have been killed. The best-known case is Anna Politkovskaya, who documented Russian war crimes in Chechnya for the paper and was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow apartment building on 7 October 2006. Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the paper's former editor-in-chief, now serves as chief editor of Novaya Gazeta Europe, which was founded in Riga by younger staff members. That edition is banned inside Russia. Muratov was hit with red paint and acetone during a train journey in 2022 and was left with permanent eye damage, and the Washington Post, citing sources in the US government, reported that a Russian intelligence service carried out the attack.

Founding and what the closure means

The paper was founded in spring 1993 when about thirty journalists left Komsomolskaya Pravda, and its first issue appeared on 1 April 1993. Mikhail Gorbachev gave part of his Nobel Peace Prize money to the team, which bought eight computers. Over 33 years, according to eldiario.es, the paper exposed corruption among the elite, abuses by security forces and human rights violations. Dozens of Russian outlets in exile say it was a reference point that shaped many of their newsrooms, and they fear the closure means the secret services have been given a 'green light' to finish off independent journalism. Those exile outlets operate under Kremlin pressure, economic strain and internet blocks that limit access for Russian readers.