Surveillance footage shows a man in a courier uniform arriving on a bicycle in front of the newspaper’s entrance and scattering a poisonous substance in the air. For “New Newspaper” this is just the latest attack.
On that day, March 15, the editorial board of the well-known Russian opposition newspaper, one of the only ones to openly challenge the Kremlin’s line and known for its shock investigations, no doubt suffered a chemical attack aimed at intimidating it, Anastasia wrote. Clark from AFP, quoted by BTA.
“It is said to have been used non-lethal poisonous substance of military type for issuing a warning to the newspaper’s employees or for revenge on one of them, “said editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov.
Several employees felt unwell after the incident and it took several days of cleaning to remove the odor. It was even necessary to change part of the pavement on the street sidewalk.
And this is just one of the many attacks that the newspaper has suffered, and far from the most severe.
Since the beginning of 2000, six Novaya Gazeta journalists have been killed for their work. Their black-and-white portraits hang side by side in the Moscow newspaper’s offices.
“It is no secret that when Anna Politkovska was killed, I wanted to close the newspaper. This newspaper is dangerous for people’s lives,” Muratov said with regret.
Anna Politkovska
Anna Politkovskaya, who for many years covered human rights violations in Russia’s Chechen Republic for Novaya Gazeta, was shot dead in her apartment block in 2006 at the age of 48.
“Journalists were firmly against it. They thought that if we closed the newspaper, it would tarnish Anna Politkovska’s memory. They convinced me,” Muratov said.
He was one of the founders of the newspaper in 1993, when the wind of freedom had blown over the Russian press after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
One of the first “godparents” of Novaya Gazeta became the last leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who donated part of the prize money to his Nobel Peace Prize so that the editorial office could buy its first computers.
The optimism of those first years is far behind. Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000 brought with it a tightening of the independent media and civil society and the marginalization of critical voices.
However, Novaya Gazeta continues to fight, publishing issues three times a week and continuing to expose human rights abuses and corruption cases.
In 2018, the newspaper receives unusual package: a tombstone with a severed ram’s head with a note to Denis Korotkov, who wrote about the non-transparent activities of the mercenary company Wagner.
His investigations shed light on Wagner’s operations abroad and its alleged links to businessman Evgeny Prigogine, who is thought to be close to Vladimir Putin.
Despite these “gifts”, Denis Korotkov says he has no intention of stopping work or leaving the country, as other colleagues and editors have done. “It’s quite difficult to do journalism for Russia outside of Russia,” he said.
“Huge support from readers”
Novaya Gazeta recently drew the ire of Chechen authorities by covering executions there without trial or sentencing.
A few days after the article, a regiment of Chechen special forces published a video in which its armed men asked Vladimir Putin to order protection from the “terrible attacks” of the Russian newspaper.
In 2009, human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who was an associate of Novaya Gazeta, abducted from her home and found shot with a bullet in the head.
According to Elena Milashina, who wrote the article on the executions in Chechnya, the only way to resist these attacks is to continue working.
“To let the people who killed my colleagues know that there will be other journalists to continue their work,” she said.
Dmitry Muratov wants to remain optimistic and points to the “huge support of the readers” of the newspaper, whose paper edition has a circulation of 90,000 copies and whose website is visited by 500,000 readers a day.
“We are not going anywhere. We will live and work in Russia“he said.
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