Russia’s censorship agency Roskomnadzor has demanded that Novaya Gazeta's licence be declared invalid, the respective lawsuit was filed in the Moscow Basmanny district court.
Roskomnadzor has explained why it filed a lawsuit asking for Novaya Gazeta's licence to be revoked.
“Roskomnadzor asked the court to declare the print media outlet Novaya Gazeta's licence invalid due to the editorial office not providing its editorial statute within the timeframe established by the Law on Media. The written warnings, previously sent to the address of CJSC Publishing House Novaya Gazeta, were filed in regards to the materials of the Internet periodical Novaya Gazeta,” the agency said to Russian news outlet RBC.
The Moscow courts website screenshot
On 15 July, the team of Novaya Gazeta (Moscow), which was forced to suspend operations, announced the launch of a new magazine called Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, or NO for short. Roskomnadzor blocked the site seven days after its launch.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office has decided that our new website Novaya.no needs to be shut down. For ‘discrediting’ [the Russian army]. Without an explanation what it entails. They demanded to block access not to a separate text or texts, but to the entire website at once. Clearly, they did this because of our way of thinking,” the Novaya Gazeta's team said back then.
On 28 March, Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend operations after it received a second warning from Roskomnadzor. The first warning was issued on 22 March. The reason for the first warning, according to Roskomnadzor, was that Novaya Gazeta did not allegedly mark that one of its articles featured a “foreign agent”. Roskomnadzor demanded that the article be urgently edited and the agency be made aware of the changes. The second warning could lead to the licence being revoked.
Novaya Gazeta (Moscow) was planning to continue its work after the end of the “special military operation in Ukraine”.
