Since 2000, six journalists from Novaja Gazeta have been murdered. The most famous was Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of President Putin. She wrote about human rights violations during the war in Chechnya. In 2006, she was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment complex. Five men were convicted, but it has never been clear who the person responsible for the murder was.
front pages
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Novaya Gazeta initially reported very critical and outspoken about the conflict. “There were very radical front pages with headlines like ‘We are waging war against Ukraine’,” said Starink. That was part of a tradition. In 2014, the newspaper made the news with a front page that read ‘Forgive us, the Netherlands’, an excuse for the MH17 disaster.
Those kinds of front pages haven’t been made since earlier this month. The newspaper announced that it would maintain military censorship and took all coverage of the war in Ukraine offline. “The alternative was to close the editors. In the end they thought it was more important to be able to continue working. But that action did not help.”
Starink does not consider it impossible that Novaja Gazeta will return, as the editor-in-chief says. “But that all depends on how the situation develops. It is obvious that the censorship will become even stricter. But if these journalists get the chance to open things up again, they will.”
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