"They Killed Us": "Novaya Gazeta" Announces Its Closure

30.10.2026, 13:33
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Russia's best-known independent media outlet is shutting down.

"Novaya Gazeta," the best-known independent media outlet still operating within Russia, has announced that it is closing. The day before, it was reported that the editorial staff is being evicted from its office on Potapovsky Lane in central Moscow, where journalists have worked for 29 years. As a result, the Anna Politkovskaya Museum, which was located in her former office, will also close. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities blocked the publication’s websites, revoked the newspaper’s registration, and in September 2026 designated *Novaya Gazeta* as a “foreign agent.” According to The Economist, a meeting of the newspaper’s editorial staff was held on October 26, at which the decision was made to shut down the publication. According to The Economist, the editorial staff, in particular, feared that the newspaper might be designated an “extremist organization.” On the morning of October 30, *Novaya* officially announced that it was ceasing operations.

Charter97.org publishes the full editorial statement from *Novaya Gazeta*:

We have been killed.

On November 9, we will turn off the lights in our building, where we have lived for 30 years, shut down the servers, and leave. The newspaper is no more. The Russian authorities and Russian security services have forced the editorial staff to cease operations.

More than thirty years of our lives spent alongside the country and its citizens will end for us on the street, without a means of livelihood, under the constant threat of repression.

Our years have been happy—filled with creativity and hope, readers, friends, articles, and films. At times, those years were desperately bitter.

Bitter, because it was precisely during the rule of this regime—and not during the lawless 1990s—that our colleagues were killed for political reasons, for fulfilling their professional and civic duties: Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Stas Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, and Natalya Estemirova.

At the same time as the eviction notice, they shut down the donation system that allowed us to receive contributions from our readers. In other words, they cut off our funding. Completely.

This is a coordinated action. No one will be convinced by the banks’ excuses that they are doing this based on internal corporate rules. These are external rules established by the state’s repressive apparatus, by FSB agents who have infiltrated every organization. They consider the country their personal property.

After the outbreak of hostilities, we—like all other journalists—were deprived of the ability to report on the most important and tragic events of our time. Laws were passed that brought censorship back to the country. Then this censorship spread to virtually all spheres of human life.

The authorities blocked all of our online resources. The state seized our printing press, and security service officers and censors, who had taken over other facilities, refused to allow us to publish the newspaper. Many of our staff members were forced to leave the country.

Then the state revoked our media registration, depriving us of the right to earn a living through our work.

Our editor-in-chief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, was attacked, an incident that nearly cost him his sight. No criminal case was opened, even though the perpetrators are known.

Then our journalists began to be labeled “foreign agents,” starting with the editor-in-chief.

Next, administrative cases were brought against the editorial leadership.

In Chechnya, our columnist Elena Milashina was kidnapped and beaten nearly to death.

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Oleg Roldugin, was taken hostage and accused of working as a journalist. A trial is coming soon.

The editorial office of *Novaya Gazeta* was searched for several hours, and the editor-in-chief’s apartment was also searched.

In September of this year, the entire editorial staff was designated a “foreign agent,” with over a hundred people—journalists and authors—added to the list of participants.

For nearly five years of war, we managed to keep working while completely surrounded by the security services.

And now—it’s all over. We’ve ended up in the “kill zone.”

This isn’t just our personal story. It’s the story of a country and a society that are being crushed in exactly the same way.

This is being done by the FSB, the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and others who have privatized the state and usurped power. This is not Soviet resentment; under its guise, a military dictatorship has almost been established.

They say they are defending the constitutional order. No, this is an unconstitutional order. Because the Constitution has been violated, beaten, and, with its mouth taped shut, thrown into prison for a very long time. Just like thousands of citizens of this country who were simply following its provisions. Just like tens of thousands of other citizens who were forced to become refugees, leaving their homes and heading into the unknown.

Stop saying that this isn’t Stalin’s 1937 and that the repression is somehow “digital in nature.” This is state repression. And it is people—not numbers—who are dying in their cells. Period.

Human life has lost its meaning and been devalued.

The word “Constitution” elicits sarcasm and laughter. From everyone. Even from judges. Especially from judges. No one believes that this is the country’s fundamental law or that the president swore an oath to uphold it. Note that official propaganda has long since stopped referring to the president as the guarantor of the Constitution.

Human rights and freedoms have been abolished in the country, and defending them is equated with a crime. Elections and elected governing bodies have been de facto abolished. Public institutions have been dismantled. Freedom of conscience and human dignity have been trampled underfoot. Private life has been turned inside out by dirty hands.

Doesn’t Article 29 of the Constitution—“Censorship is prohibited”—sound like a mockery today? The judiciary has been destroyed along with the law and justice. Holding convictions is now considered treason.

But treason is when the state betrays its own Constitution. And this betrayal is an ongoing crime that is currently unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.

The destruction of *Novaya Gazeta* is yet another proof of this.

All these years, we’ve been writing about exactly this—as long as we could. That’s why they destroyed us.

Thank you to everyone who listened to us.

The Editorial Board

P.S.

The final issue will be published.

PATREON Support the website

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