The Kremlin – which accuses international intelligence companies of attempting to stir discontent in Russian society – has stated beforehand that some censorship is important at a time when Russia is locked in what it calls an existential battle with the West over Ukraine and a few hardliner struggle bloggers have accused Novaya Gazeta of systematically selling an anti-Russian narrative, an allegation it has repeatedly dismissed as false.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov performed down the outlet’s closure on Monday, saying it was a part of what he known as “a normal rotational course of” by which some media closed solely to have their locations taken by newcomers in what he stated was a fiercely aggressive media setting.
An extended article on Novaya Gazeta’s web site described its journalists’ operation to pack up and vacate their premises. It quoted a senior journalist, Irina Vorobyova, as saying its spirit would survive like a “good virus” – “Not even a nuclear explosion may destroy it. It can proceed in everybody who was a part of it.”
