Russian court upheld decision to shut down country’s top independent newspaper

A Moscow court on Tuesday upheld an earlier decision to revoke the license of the country’s top independent newspaper. This newspaper had been adopting a critical attitude towards the Kremlin for years. Significantly, this decision of the court has come at such a time when the government is taking action against it and against those who have the opposite stand. The decision by the Moscow City Court against Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s most respected independent newspaper until it was shut down by the administration last year, comes as the Russia-Ukraine war nears the end of one year.

The court rejected Novaya Gazeta’s appeal against the Moscow district court’s September decision. In its order, the district court approved a petition by Russia’s media regulator to cancel the license of ‘Novaya Gazeta’. The regulator accused the newspaper of failing to give its ‘newsroom charter’ to the administration on time and claimed that Novaya Gazeta denied it, calling it an attempt by the administration to stifle independent voices. The paper’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning editor-in-chief, Dmitri Muratov, criticized Tuesday’s decision, saying it was in the interests of “a handful of people who want to show the country only propaganda”.

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