He spent all his “comfortable” life in Moscow, where he headed one of the largest independent newspapers in Russia. Kirill Martynov is the editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and is considered an “enemy” by the Kremlin. When the war began in Ukraine — and with the strictest persecution of independent media — the university professor and journalist had to flee to Riga, Latvia, where he says he “sees friends more often” than in the Russian capital. On the Russian state media, he shoots: it is a “idiot competition” to show who is “most loyal” to the Kremlin.
With around a million readers visiting the newspaper’s website each month, the The Novaya Gazeta newsroom had to move to the capital of Latviaafter Kirill Martynov concluded that there was a “real risk” that officials could face retaliation from state censorship agencies. “It was not just journalists, anyone who did accounting in the newspaper could be subject to criminal proceedings”stands out, speaking to the Observer, on the sidelines of a meeting with journalists at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
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Source: Observadora
