Novaya Gazeta, long regarded as Russia's last major independent newspaper, announced Friday that it is ceasing operations for good, with its editor-in-chief declaring in a video statement that "the newspaper no longer exists."

Editor Sergei Sokolov said the Russian government and security services "forced the editorial team to stop its work," pointing to a cascade of pressure that culminated this week when staff learned they were being evicted from the Moscow newsroom on Potapovsky Lane the paper has occupied for nearly three decades. The outlet's online donation system — its only remaining source of income after losing its print license years ago — was also switched off, according to CBS News.

The paper said it plans to publish one final issue before vacating the premises on Nov. 9. The Anna Politkovskaya Museum, housed in the slain journalist's former office at the same address, will close along with it.

"THE NEWSPAPER NO LONGER EXISTS."

A three-decade target

Founded in 1993 with seed money Mikhail Gorbachev donated from his Nobel Peace Prize, Novaya Gazeta built its reputation on investigations into corruption and human rights abuses, most notably reporter Anna Politkovskaya's coverage of the war in Chechnya. She was shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006; her convicted killer was pardoned in 2023 after agreeing to fight in Ukraine. Several other journalists linked to the paper have also been killed in attacks widely believed to be politically motivated.

Then-editor Dmitry Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa for the paper's work defending press freedom. The outlet suspended print publication in March 2022 after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when regulators warned it over new "false information" laws; a court stripped its media license that September, and it has operated online since. Sokolov's home and the paper's Moscow offices were both searched by authorities earlier this October.

The closure lands amid a broader crackdown that has already silenced the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy and the television network TV Rain inside Russia. Katya Kotrikadze, now the exiled news director of TV Rain, said Novaya Gazeta's closure "was not a surprise," describing years of censorship that made it impossible for the paper to cover the war in Ukraine objectively, per Euronews. Some former Novaya Gazeta journalists already publish from exile as Novaya Gazeta Europe, based in Riga, Latvia — an outlet Russian authorities have also moved to block.