Russia's Last Independent Newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, Announces It Will Close on Nov. 9

Novaya Gazeta, Russia's last independent newspaper, announced Friday that it will cease operations from Nov. 9, a major milestone in President Vladimir Putin's years-long effort to silence the country's free press. The paper said it was being forced to close under pressure from Russian authorities and security services.

"The newspaper no longer exists," editor in chief Sergei Sokolov said in a video statement shared Friday on YouTube. "The Russian government, Russian special services, forced the editorial team to stop its work." The announcement came a day after the staff learned they were being evicted from their Moscow newsroom on Potapovsky Lane, where journalists had worked for nearly 30 years. At the same time, the system that let readers donate to the paper was switched off, cutting its only remaining source of funding.

Sokolov said authorities had left the team no choice. He warned that the staff would now "end on the street, with no means of subsistence and under the constant threat of repression." The Anna Politkovskaya Museum, a memorial to the paper's renowned investigative journalist who was shot dead two decades ago, will close with the newspaper because it is housed in her former office.

Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1993 with money donated by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, from his Nobel Peace Prize award. It became the standard-bearer for investigative reporting in post-Soviet Russia, exposing corruption and human rights abuses, including Politkovskaya's reporting on the war in Chechnya. She was gunned down in Moscow in 2006, one of several journalists killed over the years in allegedly politically motivated assassinations, including at least two others tied to the paper. Her convicted murderer was pardoned by Russian authorities in 2023 after he joined the military to fight in Ukraine. In 2021, the paper's then-editor Dmitry Muratov shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Philippine journalist Maria Ressa for defending freedom of expression.

The paper had already been hobbled. Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Novaya Gazeta suspended its print and online operations after repeated warnings from Russia's state media regulator about violating laws on alleged "false information," and a court stripped the outlet of its media license that September. Some staff left Russia and launched a sister outlet in Europe, which Russian authorities have also blocked inside the country.

With Friday's announcement, there are no major independent newspapers still operating inside Russia. The independent radio station Ekho Moskvy and the TV Rain network had already shut down operations inside Russia under similar pressure. Katya Kotrikadze, news director for TV Rain, which now operates in exile from Europe and cannot be accessed in Russia, told CBS News the closure was no surprise. "There was no freedom of speech and media in Russia for years now, it has been destroyed for years now," she said. She added that Putin "has burned all the bridges and has stopped all the imitation of democracy and freedom of everything in Russia."

Novaya Gazeta said it would provide more information about its future in the coming days. For now, the staff has until Nov. 9, the date the paper says it will stop work for good.