The newspaper ‘Interlocutor’the only one that opened on its cover with an image of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalnyshortly after his sudden death in prison, announced on Tuesday its closure after being declared a foreign agent.
«We are the weekly Sobesednik, the first colour newspaper in the Soviet Union, which went on sale on 23 February 1984, and the last independent print media outlet still in existence in Russia»said the journalist Yelena Milchanóvskaya on the SOTAvision Telegram channel.
The journalist said that both the weekly and other publications of the publishing group will stop being published on newsstands “for at least 2-3 months.”
He said the editorial staff would appeal the inclusion of the newspaper in the register of foreign agents by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
«On the last page of Sobesednik we always wrote: ‘Thank you for reading us, see you in a week’. Now we say: ‘Thank you for reading us, see you next time’»he noted.
On February 21, five days after the opposition leader’s death, the weekly published a large photo of Navalny smiling and waving on its front page.
On the inside pages of the newspaper, information was published about the death and the accusations of the widow, Yulia Navalnayaagainst the Russian president, Vladimir Putinwhom she held responsible for her husband’s death.
Hours later, the authorities removed almost all copies of Sobesednik from newsstands in the Russian capital.
“This is all very serious and even a little scary for us. Why did they seize it? We don’t know. We haven’t broken any laws.”Milchanovskaya commented then.
The state-controlled Russian press and television completely ignored Navalny’s death, with the exception of the business daily RBC.
At the time, the director of ‘New Gazeta’, Dmitri MuratovNobel Peace Prize winner in 2021, denounced the “genocide” of independent media in Russia, where several hundred newspapers have been closed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. EFE (I)
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