Novaya Gazeta founder Dmitry Muratov meets French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris

Muratov co-founded Novaya Gazeta in 1993 alongside colleagues from newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, where he had previously worked. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev donated parts of his own Nobel Prize money to fund Novaya Gazeta’s establishment. Muratov served as the paper’s editor-in-chief from 1995 to 2017 and again from 2019 to 2023.

In 2021, Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa for his “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression”, and subsequently auctioned off his medal for €98.4 million in support of Ukrainian refugees.

In September, he stepped down from his role as the paper’s long-standing editor-in-chief after being designated a “foreign agent” by Russia’s Justice Ministry.