“They killed us,” Sokolov said. He added that the newspaper would cease to exist.
The announcement came a day after the editorial team was forced to leave its office in central Moscow, where journalists had worked for 29 years.
Sokolov said the newspaper was ending its operations on the street, without means of subsistence, under constant threat of repression.
In early September 2026, Russia's Justice Ministry designated Novaya Gazeta a “foreign agent,” citing its criticism of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and what the ministry described as false information about Russian elections and the authorities.
The “foreign agent” designation is a legal status imposed by Russian authorities on media outlets, organisations and individuals. The list contains nearly 1,000 entities, according to the source.
Just over a month after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Novaya Gazeta suspended its print and online operations until the end of the conflict. This followed warnings from state media regulator Roskomnadzor.
In autumn 2022, a Moscow district court revoked the newspaper's print media licence. An appeal by the editorial team was later rejected.
The newspaper subsequently resumed publishing in new print formats and online.
Journalists who left Russia for European countries established a separate outlet, Novaya Gazeta Europe. Its website was blocked in Russia at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office.
Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1993 and was one of Russia's oldest and most important independent media outlets.
Dmitry Muratov, one of its co-founders and former editors-in-chief, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, one of the newspaper's best-known contributors, was murdered in 2006. Several of its journalists have been killed because of their work.
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Source: PAP