When a Russian court revoked Novaya Gazeta's print license in September 2022, editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov had a message for Moscow: "We will work here until the cold gun barrel touches our hot foreheads."

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has championed independent reporting in Russia since founding Novaya with his colleagues in 1993. Under Muratov’s leadership, the Moscow-based media outlet has detailed how electoral fraud became the norm in Putin’s Russia and it has exposed how Russia’s elite hide money behind exotic trusts and in secret bank accounts.

When two Russians suspected of poisoning ex-KGB officer Sergei Skirpal with a military nerve agent claimed they were in England simply to see Salisbury Cathedral’s spire, their real identities as GRU military spies were revealed within weeks. The breakthrough wasn’t the result of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service or America's CIA. The remarkable feat was accomplished by a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group called Bellingcat with the help of journalists from Novaya.

The Skripal collaboration is typical of the way Novaya operates, using old-school reporting techniques like working the phones and knocking on doors and newer methods including accessing open-source databases and collaborating on large projects to expose corruption. Although Novaya’s print license is revoked, the team isn't giving up. Novaya is offering a limited online news site and magazine while they appeal the ruling.

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Dmitry Muratov: Reshaping the future‍

Muratov, born in 1961 in Samara, Russia, has witnessed the Soviet Union’s incredible transformation from the Cold War years and Leonid Brezhnev to the fall of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev and the rise of Vladimir Putin. Along the way he has mourned the death of six Novaya colleagues including Anna Politkovskaya who dared to scrutinize the Kremlin

When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Muratov temporarily suspended the newspaper’s print publication and then auctioned off his Nobel medal to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees, raising a record $103.5m: “I was hoping that there was going to be an enormous amount of solidarity,” Muratov said after the sale. “But I was not expecting this to be such a huge amount.”

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Dmitry Muratov: The making of a journalist

After graduating from university, Muratov joined the military as a Soviet Army sergeant and communication equipment security specialist in 1983, according to Russian media. In college, he worked part-time for the local newspapers and returned to the role in 1987 as a correspondent for Volzhsky Komsomolets. He was quickly promoted and moved to Komsomolskaya Pravda but Muratov wanted to practice a different style of journalism.

In 1993, Muratov and his colleagues started Novaya Gazeta with the goal of creating an honest, independent publication that would influence national policy. They shared two computers and worked for free until former leader Mikhail Gorbachev donated part of his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize award to buy computers and pay salaries. 

Gorbachev, who launched the short-lived era of glasnost (openness), believed in opening up the political system - essentially, democratizing it - but instead oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Novaya speaks truth to power‍

Muratov’s team carried on with independent reporting, however, wielding influence with an uncompromising editorial line. Dmitry reported from the frontline during the First Chechen War and headed the editorial board.

Under his watch, Novaya joined the consortium of international journalists in 2016 and exposed tax havens based on confidential leaked documents from a Panama-based law firm. They were one of the few Russian newspapers to carry the Panama Papers investigation, featuring a seven-page, hard copy report and a large online version. Novaya’s article The Golden Score, for example, traced $2bn in assets belonging to a company registered in the name of a close friend of Putin's cellist, Sergei Roldugin.

The first step was for Novaya 's reporters to dig into Roldugin’s background. Olesya Shmagun, who worked on the Panama Papers exposé, described to the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast how she used a wide range of sources: “Every step of your life actually leaves traces,” she explained.” When you were born, you had a birth certificate. When you get married, you get a marriage certificate. So, there are a lot of databases, mostly official, governmental, that contain all this information... You just think of what kind of trace this information would leave or what kind of information you are looking for, and by that you understand where to go.”

She also uses social networks as well when fishing for connections. For example, if there is a big contractor working for a state agency, Olesya might search through his personal contacts using Facebook Friends. In the case of cellist Sergei Roldugin, godfather of Putin's first daughter Maria, she read up on Roldugin’s background in Putin’s autobiography before approaching Roldugin for comment on what she’d found in the Panama Papers after attending one of his cello performances.

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Muratov: A target‍

During its 2021 reporting on Ukraine, Novaya’s data investigations team sifted through 2,000 reports from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on war-torn eastern Ukraine which covered the previous seven years. Novaya’s analysis suggested that violent eruptions seemed to closely correspond with Kremlin campaigns to exert political pressure on Ukraine, “and indicate a direct correlation between ceasefire violations and Russian political and information warfare,” Novaya concluded.

It is precisely that type of uncomfortable analysis and reporting that has spurred on enemies of Novaya and made Muratov a target. In 2022, Muratov was assaulted on a train from Moscow to Samara when a group of men doused him with red paint and acetone. According to the editor, the attack was triggered by his newspaper's coverage of Putin's war in Ukraine. He said the attackers shouted: "This is for our boys!"

Muratov is undeterred, however. It is a price he is willing to pay to practice independent journalism in Russia. In his 2012 Nobel speech, Dmitry Muratov named his six colleagues from Novaya Gazeta who have lost their lives practicing journalism - Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekotschikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Anastasija Baburova, Stas Markelov, and Natasha Estemirova.

He summed up his moving tribute by comparing journalists to barking dogs: “Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and a strong grip. But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny.”