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The move made Meduza the news outlet for Kremlin efforts to crack down on critics.
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By Carly Olson
On Thursday, Russian officials continued their crusade to stifle press freedom, calling independent news Meduza an “undesirable organization” and banning its content. The move made Meduza the newest news outlet to fall victim to Kremlin efforts to crack down on critics. .
Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Meduza’s activities posed “a risk to the foundations of the constitutional order and national security of the Russian Federation,” to the Interfax news agency.
Over the past year, Moscow has intensified its attempts at war policy in Ukraine. In March, President Vladimir V. Putin signed a law criminalizing any public opposition or independent reporting about the war.
Announcements about the new law prompted some independent Russian media to close their doors even before it was enacted. The Russian government also cut off access to Facebook, the BBC and other news sources.
“It looks like the Russian government will do everything possible to obstruct the paintings of one of the leading independent Russian-language media,” said Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a press watchdog organization. .
Meduza, a popular Latvian media outlet that publishes data on Russia in Russian and English, writes critical articles about the war in Ukraine. He posts on his online page and to over a million followers on Telegram, in Russia and elsewhere.
The online page was blocked in Russia last year at the start of the war, but the new designation of “undesirable” has even greater consequences. Storing a link to an article can be fined or imprisoned.
Meduza editor-in-chief Ivan Kolpakov called the designation “a very bad event” but said that “however, we were waiting for it to happen, and we tried to prepare. “
Plans to continue publishing, though their long-term plans are unclear.
Even before the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow had labeled Meduza a “foreign agent,” wiping out its advertising profits and forcing it to transfer to a crowdfunding style to stay in business. As a foreign agent, Meduza had to upload a 24-word disclaimer. About its new prestige to all its content in Russian, adding posts on social networks. Otherwise, the organization and its bloodhounds may face fines or jail time.
In June, the independent business news VTimes shut down after Russia’s designation as a foreign agent hampered its activities and hampered journalists’ work. And in August, the government added TV Rain, long a leading independent media outlet, and news site iStories to the list of foreign agents.
Other independent news resources have felt the strain of Moscow’s efforts to censor their coverage, even as they see a new urgency to provide unfiltered information.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a news network created as C. I. A. Operation at the beginning of the Cold War, is an example of this. The Russian invasion of Ukraine last February disrupted Radio Free Europe’s operations and underscored the importance of its mission.
A few days after the invasion, the organization suspended its operations in Russia. It had faced years of rising tension from Moscow and had already evacuated most of its offices to Prague and other offices even before the war broke out.
Jamie Fly, the station’s president and chief executive, his organization has long been in firefighting mode.
“The challenge we face now, and the invasion of Ukraine, is just the past iteration,” Mr. Fly said in an interview that expired last year. “We are under increasing strain when we operate in those environments and, in some cases, they are pushed out of countries. This has been a challenge for us.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed to the report.
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