Novaya Gazeta plans November 9 shutdown of its Moscow newsroom

Novaya Gazeta survived the murders of colleagues, raids and prosecutions, and the loss of its media licence after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now the independent newspaper, founded in 1993, has announced an end to its remaining Moscow newsroom operations: on November 9, 2026, its editors plan to switch off the servers and leave. This is not another account of the restrictions imposed in 2022. It is a newly announced departure from the place where the newspaper continued to work despite them. ^{2 3}

The announcement came on Friday, October 30, ten days before the planned shutdown. Editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov described both an institutional ending and the practical steps that would make it happen. The servers have not been shown to have gone dark already; November 9 is the deadline he announced. ²

The newspaper’s own statement identifies that home as 3 Potapovsky Lane in Moscow. Its Russian-language announcement appeared on October 30 under the heading “We were killed”; an English-language version appeared the same day. The address matters: this is the planned loss of a working newsroom and its online publishing infrastructure, not simply the discontinuation of a printed edition. ^{6 5}

The editorial board explicitly blamed the Russian state. “The newspaper is gone. The Russian authorities and … intelligence services forced the editorial staff to cease operations,” it said, in wording reported by Al Jazeera. That is the editors’ explanation of why they can no longer continue. The surrounding record documents pressure on the newsroom, but does not establish that any single search or prosecution directly caused this decision. ³

The most recent intervention reached Sokolov himself. On October 15, authorities detained him for questioning and searched his home, linking their actions to a criminal case involving his colleague Oleg Roldugin. Questioning and a search are not a conviction, nor does the available reporting establish that Sokolov was charged. They are the immediate context for the editorial board’s account of being forced to stop. ³

Roldugin was arrested in April and charged with what authorities called “unlawful access to computerised information.” The allegation remains an allegation. The Guardian’s October 30 report places him under house arrest awaiting trial; it does not report an outcome to the prosecution. ^{3 4}

That current account is distinct from his initial custody order. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that a Moscow court ordered Roldugin held on April 10 until May 10 while investigators pursued the case. That was an earlier stage of the proceedings, not evidence that he remains in the same detention arrangement today. ¹⁴

The newspaper’s broader retreat inside Russia began years before this announcement. It reduced production after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and authorities revoked its media licence that year. The revocation of its online licence was dated September 15, 2022. Yet those measures did not mark the operational ending now scheduled for November: a publication can lose its official standing and still have journalists working together, reporting and publishing. It is that continuing operation the editors now say they must end. ^{3 14}

Russian authorities have also designated the publication a “foreign agent,” a label used to stifle dissent. Reporters Without Borders, quoted by Al Jazeera, counted six murdered journalists and staff members across the newspaper’s history, alongside newsroom raids and prosecutions of its journalists. Those deaths are part of the institution’s history, not a new toll connected to this closure announcement. ³

The scope of the announcement needs care. It concerns Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newsroom and its online publication. Novaya Gazeta Europe is a separate exile operation; the Moscow statement does not establish that it, too, is closing. Equally, this announcement is not a guarantee about the European operation’s future. Treating the two as one closure would obscure precisely which newsroom is preparing to disappear. ^{6 4}

For readers, there are two different losses to consider: the end of new work from Moscow, and the possible loss of access to work already published. The first is the announced plan. The second remains unsettled. Switching off servers raises an obvious archive question, but the available announcement does not say whether existing articles will remain accessible through another arrangement. ⁶

In 2021, the newspaper’s then editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize for his “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.” Five years later, the institution behind that recognition is preparing to turn out its lights in Moscow. The contrast is not merely symbolic: an award can recognise journalism’s public value, but it cannot keep a newsroom able to work. ³