By Andrew Osborn and Nika Khutsieva
MOSCOW, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta said on Friday it was winding up its remaining operations after a campaign of state pressure in which a senior editor has been prosecuted and its financial support and premises have been taken away.
"We have been killed," the publication, set up with money from the Nobel Peace Prize of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said in a statement.
The paper halted its print edition inside
Russia in 2022, but had continued to produce online content and operate from its office in central Moscow.
"On November 9, we will turn off the lights in the home where we have lived for 30 years, shut down our servers, and leave," it said. "The newspaper no longer exists. The Russian authorities and the Russian security services have forced our editorial team to cease its operations."
At its office, employees quietly packed cardboard boxes, shuffling through rooms lined with awards and photos of colleagues killed because of their work.
"We represent the interests of that enormous part of society that opposed war and bloodshed. And that is why they are doing to us what they are doing now," said co-founder and former editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov.
"When people are dying in war and political prisoners are dying, we do not cry over ourselves, we simply pack our things," he said, adding that one final issue was in the works.
A THORN IN RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES' SIDE
There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities, which designated the publication a "foreign agent".
But the Kremlin - which accuses foreign intelligence services of trying to stir discontent in Russian society - has said previously that some censorship is necessary when Russia is locked in what it calls an existential struggle with the West over Ukraine.
Prominent war blogger Rybar offered a taste of how the publication is seen in some official circles, reposting a diatribe accusing Novaya Gazeta of systematically promoting an anti-Russian narrative and of relishing the difficulties faced by the Russian state.
Founded in 1993 in line with Gorbachev's vision of "glasnost," or openness, Novaya Gazeta ("New Newspaper") became one of Russia's most influential newspapers and defenders of democracy with investigations into corruption and critical coverage of Russian politics.
Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, dedicating it to six slain colleagues including investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote about Moscow's wars in the restive Chechnya region.
PRESSURE FROM UKRAINE FALLOUT
Like other media outlets not run by the state but critical of it, Novaya Gazeta came under increasing pressure after the conflict in Ukraine began in 2022. Sweeping censorship rules were introduced that mandated long jail terms for "discrediting" the Russian army or disseminating what the authorities deem to be fake news.
The newspaper said it "cannot report on the most critical and tragic events of our time," adding: "Censorship applies to virtually every sphere of civic life."
It said many of its journalists and those from other outlets had fled Russia in 2022. Some of its former employees began a separate Latvia-based print and online publication, Novaya Gazeta Europe, which the Moscow authorities designated an "undesirable organisation", effectively banning it in Russia. It will continue to operate.
Novaya Gazeta said that in Russia its website had been blocked, its print licence revoked and its presses seized, and that one editor, Oleg Roldugin, was under house arrest awaiting trial on allegations that he misused personal data, an offence carrying a prison term of up to 10 years.
Its Moscow offices - from which it is being evicted - have been searched, and the home of Sergei Sokolov, its editor-in-chief, was searched this month.
"Now they have truly killed us, meaning this is not a suspension, this is a closure," Sokolov told Reuters. "We buried our friends, we buried our hopes. We saw everything that was happening and tried as adequately as possible to tell our readers and everyone else about it."
(Editing by Kevin Liffey, Alessandra Prentice and Timothy Heritage)
