The milestones of Novaya Gazeta, the media that paid blood for its defiance of Vladimir Putin’s regime, and the Kremlin’s cynical reaction to its Nobel Prize

Novaya Gazeta and its director, Dimitri Muratov, received the Nobel Prize for Paz, recognition of the most influential independent media in Russia, which he had to pay blood for the decision to investigate and publish scandals of corruption and human rights violations of the regime, which other media in the country prefer to ignore.

This crusade for journalistic independence has led Novaya Gazeta to be the target of constant attacks, both institutional and directly against its staff of journalists. A day like today but 15 years ago, for example, one of its most renowned journalists, Anna Politkovskaya, was assassinated for her positions critical of the Kremlin’s policy in Chechnya.

It was a time when Muratov considered shutting down the paper, but the other reporters convinced him not to falter.

“It’s no secret that when Anna Politkovskaya was murdered, I wanted to close the newspaper (…) This newspaper is dangerous for people’s lives”, Muratov, who was the newspaper’s editor, told AFP virtually continuously since the 1990s.

But Politkovskaya was not the only victim of the persecution against the medium, but A total of six journalists have been murdered since the founding of Novaya Gazeta. Muratov dedicated to them the Nobel Peace Prize which he received in the name of his medium.

The attacks have never stopped, just a few months ago in March of this year, the The world press has reported a chemical attack on the installation of Novaya Gazeta in Moscow.

According to Muratov, a strange substance was left at the entrance to his newsroom in the Russian capital, something similar to what happened in April 2017 when they received an envelope containing “an unknown flat powder addressed to the CEO”.

A year later, in October 2018, unknown people laid a funeral wreath outside the newsroom, a death threat directed against journalist Denis Korotkov, and a few days later a basket with a ram’s head was found containing threats against the entire newsroom.

Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1993, when journalists from the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda decided to create a new medium. At first they had the collaboration as an investment partner of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last ruler of the Soviet era, who used the money earned thanks to his Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for this purpose.

Even today, Gorbachev still owns a small percentage of the newspaper, as does businessman Alexander Lebedev, who is very critical of the Kremlin. The rest of the media is up to the editorial staff.

Putin in power and threats against the editorial staff

With the rise of Vladimir Putin to the executive branch of Russia in 2000, a wave of persecution and assassination of members of the press began. During his first years in office, at least 12 journalists died, all of unsolved crimes.

Among them fell Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006 at her Moscow home while preparing an article on systematic torture in Chechnya. The journalist was shot in the head and chest, an order which Muratov said was only visible from both sides.

“Either it was the revenge of Ramzan Kadyrov – Chechen prime minister (and current president) – about whom she often wrote, or of those who want suspicion to fall on him”, then wrote in the Web editor Novaya Gazeta.

According to an article published by El Mundo in 2006, Politkovskaya also sharply criticized Putin’s heavy hand in Chechnya and the daily involvement of Russian soldiers in the kidnapping and rape of Chechen citizens with the permission of their superiors.

“Politkovskaya, who was born in New York in 1958, had repeatedly confessed to receiving death threats from Russian secret services, the military and other state security agencies.”, noted the Spanish media.

In 2009, three other collaborators of the newspaper were assassinated, one of them, Natalia Estemirova, was very close to Politkovskaya. She was kidnapped in Grozny and found dead soon after in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

The surveys

Novaya Gazeta is known for publishing rigorous research and criticism of the policies of the Kremlin, its senior officials, and other powerful governments in the region. For example, recently, three NGOs denounced that suspected mercenaries murdered a Syrian citizen in 2017.

These complaints were based on revelations made by Novaya Gazeta in 2019 in which the details of this ustraviolent murder were revealed.

This year alone, Russian media published a report on the abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya, in which testimonies of extrajudicial executions were revealed.

According to the Moscow Times, Muratov’s media account gathered testimony from a former sergeant in the Police Patrol Regiment who provided strong evidence to claim that “Chechen security officials executed 27 of the more than 100 people arrested in late 2016 and early 2017 in counterterrorism raids. “

Other historical and relevant research has addressed crucial questions such as the inclusion of Vladimir Putin and key members of his closest leadership in the “Panama Papers”, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2016.

Analyzing this information, Novaya Gazeta uncovered a complex system of offshore companies linked to the Russian president. One year later, the media would report on the existence of “secret detention camps” for homosexuals in Chechnya.

Until today, the newspaper, which appears three times a week, continues to offer long, deep and scathing investigative articles, even knowing that this puts them in the spotlight of the authorities.

Congratulations to the Kremlin

For all this, it was surprising that after Dimitri Muratov’s name became one of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the Kremlin congratulated the journalist and his media for their “courageous” work.

The congratulations remain ironic because it is precisely to have the courage to do journalism despite the persecution of the authorities of his country that the Norwegian Committee has decided to grant such recognition.

“We congratulate Dimitri Muratov, he works on the basis of his ideals and is committed to them”, said Dimitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency.

Pestov added that Muratov “He has talent,” but did not specify in his statements whether President Vladimir Putin people add to these congratulations.

“We just found out, give us some time”, responded in statements to the media, according to the TASS news agency.

Putin, the current president of Russia, is known for his low tolerance for criticism and for his systematic attacks on the independent press, which he has repeatedly accused of being funded by foreign enemies who want to harm Russia and its government. .

Last March, when Novaya Gazeta suffered mysterious chemical attacks, many journalists and opponents fled Russia, frightened by the systematic threats against him and by the imprisonment of Alexei Navaldi, one of the main opponents of the Kremlin.

“We will not go anywhere, we are not paid agents of foreign countries, we do not receive external funding, we will stay to live and work in Russia,” Muratov said then, and he kept it that way.

The Nobel is in this context a possible life insurance for the director and the journalists of the editorial staff of Novaya Gazeta

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