Novaya Gazeta, one of the last major independent newspapers operating inside Russia, held its final editorial meeting on Monday and began clearing out its central Moscow newsroom, staff said, closing the book on more than 30 years of reporting that survived the deaths of several of its own journalists.

The paper first announced its closure on October 30, with editor-in-chief Sergei Sokolov saying in a video statement that authorities and security services had effectively forced the newsroom to stop working. Since then, Russian authorities have blocked all of the paper's online platforms, seized its printing house and revoked its media registration — the bureaucratic mechanisms that, in effect, make it impossible for the outlet to keep publishing inside the country.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov downplayed the shutdown, describing it as part of "a standard rotational process" in which some outlets close while new ones take their place.

A Nobel Prize-Winning Legacy

That framing was rejected by press freedom groups and by the paper's own leadership. Reporters Without Borders said the paper would remain a symbol of independent journalism regardless of its closure, while Amnesty International called the shutdown a devastating loss for Russian civil society. The Norwegian Nobel Committee urged Russia to end what it described as an ongoing campaign against independent media.

Novaya Gazeta's founder, Dmitry Muratov, who shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his work defending press freedom, said the closure was part of a broader campaign he likened to a military operation against the outlet.

THE AUTHORITIES AND THE SECURITY SERVICES HAVE FORCED THE NEWSROOM TO STOP WORK.

The paper's history is marked by violence against its own staff. Several Novaya Gazeta reporters were killed over the years, most notably Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist assassinated in 2006 after years of reporting on the war in Chechnya and human rights abuses. Staff who relocated abroad after an earlier, separate suspension in 2022 have continued publishing under the banner Novaya Gazeta Europe, which is not affected by this week's closure.

For now, Russia's dwindling community of independent journalists is left with even fewer domestic outlets through which to operate, as the government's yearslong pressure campaign against critical media claims one of its most prominent remaining targets.