Nobel Laureate Muratov Stayed in Russia After Invasion, Refused to Stay Silent

When Russian forces crossed into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the exodus was swift and mass. Correspondents and editors packed laptops and fled to Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam. Dmitri Muratov, 60 years old, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, did not go.

Muratov stayed and continued publishing Novaya Gazeta until March 28, when the paper said it was suspending publication because it had received a second warning from Russian communication regulator Roskomnadzor. But before the forced suspension, the newsroom found ways to speak plainly inside a system that had just criminalized plain speech. Russia adopted a law that threatened up to 15 years in prison for publishing what it called "fake" news about the military, meaning Russian media could no longer call the war a war, only a "special military operation." Novaya Gazeta continued publishing, making clear to its readers that it was being forced to censor, steering clear of the word "war" and sometimes using the marking "..." instead. The paper ran its last pre-suspension issue with front-page stories printed side by side in Russian and Ukrainian. "We do not recognize Ukraine as an enemy or Ukrainian as the language of an enemy," Muratov said at the time. "And we never will."

The pressure was not only legal. On April 7, 2022, Muratov was traveling by train from Moscow to Samara when an unknown person poured oil-based red paint mixed with acetone into his train compartment. The attacker shouted, "Muratov, here's one for our boys," likely in reference to the Russian military. "They poured oil paint with acetone in the compartment. My eyes are burning terribly," Muratov said in a message posted to Novaya Gazeta's Telegram channel. U.S. intelligence later assessed the attack was a Russian intelligence operation.

Muratov's response to the closure of his paper was to convert its most symbolic asset into a weapon for those harmed by the war it could no longer cover. In June 2022, he auctioned off his Nobel Prize medal to raise money for Ukrainian refugees, and it sold for a record $103.5 million. The proceeds went to UNICEF for Ukrainian child refugees. "Listen, I am not going to shoot myself in the foot just to walk away from this information battle," Muratov said from Moscow. "When the government wants to shut us down, they'll shut us down. But I am not going to go against the will of our journalists and our readers and turn the lights off here on my own."

The government shut it down anyway. The Basmanny district court on September 5, 2022, invalidated the newspaper's license at the request of Roskomnadzor. "The newspaper was killed today. They stole 30 years of life from its employees," Novaya Gazeta said in a statement after the ruling. Staff who had already left Russia had launched a separate outlet, Novaya Gazeta Europe, from Riga on April 7 of that year. Those who remained in Russia attempted a monthly print magazine called "NO," but its website was blocked within seven days and nine hours of going live.

The state's final accounting came on September 1, 2023. Russia's Justice Ministry added Muratov to its list of so-called "foreign agents," accusing him of helping create and distribute messages and materials from foreign agents "to an unlimited number of people." In addition to Muratov, the list by that point included 235 journalists and media outlets bearing the same label. The designation carries draconian administrative requirements, including mandatory disclaimers on all publications. Novaya Gazeta said Muratov would temporarily suspend his duties as editor-in-chief while the legal proceedings were underway, with Sergei Sokolov serving as acting editor-in-chief. "Muratov categorically disagrees with the decision of the Ministry of Justice and is filing a lawsuit," Novaya Gazeta said in a statement.

Novaya Gazeta is technically complying with Russia's laws but relies on visual storytelling, firsthand testimony, transparency about omissions, and implied meaning to convey information to a Russian readership that can read between the lines. That strategy, developed under extreme duress inside Russia rather than from the safety of a Western capital, may represent the most consequential journalistic experiment of the war: whether resistance to information control is more powerful when it operates from within the machine that controls the information.