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Russia bans Moscow Times in crackdown on independent media | |
(32 minutes later) | |
Move leaves anybody who cooperates with ‘undesirable’ news outlet liable to prosecution | |
Russia has classed the Moscow Times as an “undesirable organisation”, outlawing its activities inside Russia and leaving anybody who cooperates with it open to prosecution. | |
The Kremlin has escalated a campaign against independent media and reporting since Russia launched a military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022. | |
“A decision has been taken to declare the activities of the Moscow Times, a foreign non-government organisation, undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the office of Russia’s prosecutor general said. | |
The outlet was “aimed at discrediting the decisions of the leadership of the Russian Federation in both foreign and domestic policy”, it added. | |
The Moscow Times, which publishes in English and Russian and has reported on the country since the early 1990s, relocated to Amsterdam in 2022. | |
The “undesirable” status forces organisations to shut down in Russia and means Russians that work for, fund or collaborate with them can also be liable to prosecution – including up to five years in jail for some activities. | The “undesirable” status forces organisations to shut down in Russia and means Russians that work for, fund or collaborate with them can also be liable to prosecution – including up to five years in jail for some activities. |
“We will continue with our work as usual: independent journalism. That’s a crime in Putin’s Russia,” the Moscow Times founder, Derk Sauer, said in a post on X. | |
Russians had previously been fined for reposting web links and articles published by so-called undesirable organisations, the independent Mediazona site reported. | |
The online outlet, which for years published an English-language paper in Moscow, is popular with Russia-watchers abroad. It also served as a training ground for several journalists who went on to be high-profile foreign correspondents. | |
The US reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last year on espionage charges rejected by him and his employer, worked in Moscow for the outlet at the start of his career. | |
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Russia has used the undesirable organisation label to target media outlets and NGOs that it says fund opposition and oppose the Kremlin. | |
Critics have described the law as a repressive tool used to quash dissent. | |
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