The warning came a day after its editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a group interview with Russian journalists, which was quickly banned by the state media watchdog Ros. Novaya Gazeta is one of the most important independent publications in the country. Several of its journalists have been killed since the 1990s in retaliation for their coverage, including the war in Chechnya. Roskomnadzor’s warning to Novaya Gazeta was reportedly prompted by the newspaper’s failure to locate a “foreign agent” in an unspecified publication. But it appeared to be retaliation for the newspaper’s decision to cover the war and Muratov’s participation in the interview with Zelensky. In an effort to avoid closure, the newspaper announced its surprise decision to stop publishing until the end of Russia’s “special operation”, the Kremlin’s official mandate for the invasion. “We have received another warning from Roskomnadzor,” the Novaya Gazeta editorial board wrote in a statement. We will then suspend the publication of the newspaper online and in print until the end of the “special operation on the territory of Ukraine”. The editorial board noted that the newspaper could have its license revoked because it had received two warnings from Roskomnadzor. Received the first warning last week. Muratov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for his efforts to support press freedoms in Russia, decided to continue publishing the Novaya Gazeta following a Roskomnadzor directive forbidding journalists from describing the conflict as “war” or ” invasion”. While other media outlets such as Echo of Moscow and TV Rain were banned by Russia, Novaya Gazeta went on to report on the war and the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy. It is one of the only Russian news agencies with a correspondent in Ukraine to report on the impact of the war on Ukrainians. “I want to express my full solidarity with Novaya Gazeta, its journalists and its editor-in-chief,” wrote Alexey Venediktov, former editor of Echo of Moscow. “I hope you will return to your readers soon, and therefore to me.”
