Moscow City Court fully revokes Moscow’s Novaya Gazeta and Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta’s licences

The Moscow City Court has dismissed the appeal of the editorial office and fully revoked the licences of newspaper Novaya Gazeta and media outlet Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, previously opened by affiliated journalists, a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta Europe present at the court hearing reports.

Moscow’s Basmanny Court revoked both media’s licences in September 2022, with the editorial office appealing the decision. Also in September, the Supreme Court revoked Novaya Gazeta’s website’s licence. Later on, all websites belonging to these media were blocked in Russia. 

The reasoning for revoking the licences was failure to fulfil formal requirements: Novaya Gazeta allegedly did not provide Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor with the updated version of its charter (small changes were introduced to the charter in 2006), while Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, according to Roskomnadzor, had no issues out for over a year. 

Novaya Gazeta’s website had its licence revoked after two warnings from Roskomnadzor for not adding the “foreign agent” label in several articles. However, at the time of publication of one of the aforementioned articles, the organisation deemed a “foreign agent” mentioned in the article was ruled to no longer be one by court.

In March 2022, Novaya Gazeta suspended its operation after the two warnings received by Roskomnadzor. Afterwards, the journalists who had left Russian launched Novaya Gazeta Europe in Latvia.