Status: 05.09.2022 7:55 p.m
The country’s last independent newspaper, the “Nowaya Gazeta”, can no longer be printed in Russia. That shouldn’t be the end of it, explains editor-in-chief Muratow – but the next judgment is imminent.
“The newspaper was killed today,” says Novaya Gazeta’s statement on the court decision. “30 years were stolen from the lives of our employees.” As Russia’s last independent newspaper is stripped of its print license today, only a small handful of journalists have made it to the court. The judge reads the verdict without emotion.
The editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratow, however, cannot help but smile. For him, the verdict confirms what is at stake here: “The decision was made by order. It is politically motivated,” he later said in front of the courthouse. It lacks any legal basis.
Trial against “NO”
The competent media supervisory authority Rozkomnadzor had complained. Officially due to missing documents at the admission. However, as the newspaper itself explains, these documents were only made necessary by a law from 2018. However, Novaya Gazeta renewed its license long before that: in 2006.
It is not the only court case in which the “Novaya” is currently being held accountable. Tomorrow, exactly the same court is to decide on the license for the newspaper’s youngest child: the almost 100-page magazine “NO”, whose name also stands for the initials of “Nowaya Gazeta”. In the middle of the month, the supreme court of the Russian Federation could also take the newspaper’s website offline.
“Part of a Purge”
After Russian troops invaded Ukraine, almost all independent media were blocked step by step. At the beginning of March, the radio station Echo Moskwy was dissolved. The website of the TV channel Dozhd was also blocked. Only the “Nowaja” initially continued to print its newspaper. Until at the end of March, after two warnings, she stopped publishing in Russia as a precaution.
The Attorney General’s office itself calculated that 138,000 websites were blocked in Russia, Muratov tells the journalists present in front of the courthouse. “What can I say?” asks the editor-in-chief at the end, “Yes, we too are part of this cleansing.”
In an interview with the television station Dozhd, which now broadcasts from abroad, the newspaper’s spokeswoman Nadezhda Prusenkova asked whether that was a political issue: “Of course it is. Like everything that happens in the country. Everything that happens with the media , and everything that happens to the ‘Novaya’.”
They would have no illusions about Russian court cases. Nevertheless, according to Prusenkova, the legal route would be the only way to prove that the “Novaya Gazeta” is innocent.
“Spirit of Freedom”
That is one of the reasons why editor-in-chief Muratov has already announced that he will appeal the verdict. At the same time, Russian media keep coming up with new ways to escape media censorship in Russia. Media such as Doschd or the young portal “Doxa” have gone to Latvia or Georgia with their editorial offices and work from there. Others, like the liquidated radio station Echo Moswky, publish under a different name and in a different form.
A journalist asked Muratov, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, whether they would continue to work after this court ruling. “Yes, of course. We will definitely keep working,” he replies without thinking. Because the newspaper does not need any documents, the newspaper explained in a written statement after the verdict was announced: It existed, exists and will continue to exist – “The spirit of freedom blows where and how it wants.”
If the Supreme Court decides to ban Novaya Gazeta’s website, the newspaper has already registered a new website. However, under a different name.