Reporter Elena Kostyuchenko in Novaya Gazeta's offices in Moscow. Photograph: Alexander Gronsky/Photographers.ru
It is 11am and the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta is holding its editorial conference. Seated at the top of a long, wooden table, Dmitry Muratov, the paper's bearded editor-in-chief, is flanked by his senior team.
Over cups of tea, the journalists mull over the morning papers. They discuss ongoing projects and possible stories: the Kremlin is spending more on propaganda; migrant workers in Russia are leaving; there is trouble in Chechnya. Oh, and two fed-up hacks working for Russian television have locked themselves in a cupboard.
The mood is good-natured; there are arguments and jokes. But nobody doubts the seriousness of Novaya Gazeta. On the wall is a photo-gallery of dead colleagues. There is Anna Politkovskaya, Novaya's feted special correspondent, shot dead in October 2006. Next to her is the paper's deputy editor Yuri Shchekochikhin (mysteriously poisoned). Then there is reporter Igor Domnikov (bludgeoned to death). Two new black-and-white photos have just been hung on the wall.
One shows Stanislav Markelov, who was one of Russia's best-known human rights defenders and Novaya's lawyer. The other is of Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old freelancer for the newspaper. An armed assailant killed them both on 19 January, a few minutes' walk from the shimmering gold towers of the Kremlin. Markelov died instantly; Baburova lay dying in the snow. The photos provide a constant reminder of how dangerous the most basic function of journalism – telling the truth – has become in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Soft censorship defines the media landscape, and editors know instinctively which boundaries not to cross (the most important rule: never criticise Putin). Novaya is the last major publication consistently critical of Kremlin power. It covers corruption, human rights abuses in Chechnya and the neighbouring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, and the work of Russia's post-KGB secret service, the FSB. It is, in short, dedicated to real journalism, unlike Russian television and most othernewspapers, all under Putin's thumb.
Why is Novaya allowed to continue to publish? According to Andrei Lipsky, its deputy editor, it plays a useful role for the Kremlin, allowing it to ridicule the frequent charge in Washington and European capitals there is no freedom of speech in Russia.
More importantly, he adds, it provides information on the state of the nation for the country's nervous ruling elite. "Novaya Gazeta lies on the tables of the presidential administration and all regional governors," Lipsky says. "Putin reads it, or people around him read it for him. The newspaper is a crucial source. They have liquidated many real sources, starting with television."
The paper's most attentive readers are said to be the siloviki (from a Russian word for "power"), Russia's military intelligence clan, many of whom served in the KGB and now run the government. "The special services have their own sources, but they know that most of what they get from their agents is nonsense," Lipsky says. "We paint the real picture." And Novaya's articles also enable the Kremlin's competing factions to gather information about each other – dirt to be dished against rivals later: "Power in Russia is not monolithic. It's a complex structure of interests," Lipsky explains.
The paper occupies a sprawling suite of down-at-heel offices in an old brick building in the centre of Moscow. Founded in 1993 under Yeltsin, its circulation has risen to 240,000 copies a week, as Russians grow disenchanted with the state media. Twice-weekly at first, in January it went up to three issues a week.
In the lobby, a comic montage shows the paper's patron and co-owner, Alexander Lebedev – who since January is also proprietor of London'sEvening Standard – with Putin, shown busy reading Novaya Gazeta. Lebedev's loyalty to Novaya Gazeta is well known. Last December he held his 49th birthday party at the newspaper: It was a frugal bash, with the sneaker-wearing tycoon laying on a modest buffet of cold cuts, cheap white wine and bottles of vodka. Guests were even invited to bring a bottle.
A semi-opposition figure, Lebedev in 2006 bought a 39% stake inNovaya, with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, holding 10% and staff having the rest. Muratov and other journalists at the paper describe Lebedev as an enlightened, hands-off owner who allows them to get on with their job. If he doesn't like the editorial line, he writes an owner's column, they say.
However, Lebedev's purchase of the Evening Standard has led some to wonder why a former KGB spy should want to become a British newspaper owner. And Private Eye has questioned whether his relationship with the Kremlin is really as chilly as he makes out. After all, the last oligarch who defied the Kremlin, the oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ended up in prison.
Novaya journalists say Lebedev isn't an outspoken critic of Putin and for many years tried to co-operate with the Russian leadership.
"Lebedev isn't Garry Kasparov [the former world chess champion and opposition leader]," Lipsky says. "He's a different mixture. But there is no reason for you Brits to feel discomfort. He hasn't been a spy for a long time."
Either way, Novaya Gazeta is the real thing. Several of its star writers now have bodyguards. How do its journalists cope? "It's terrible when a colleague gets killed," Lipsky says. "It's monstrous. But there is a feeling that we need to do what we are doing. This gets stronger. You can't do this work for a long time unless you have strong motivation.
"With Anna [Politkovskaya], there was total correspondence between her profession and her life."
Other colleagues agree. They point to the "tender" relationship colleagues – many of them hardened veterans used to covering the Kremlin's bloody Chechen wars – have with each other. Elena Kostyuchenko, aged 21, is one of the paper's youngest reporters and recalls how Politkovskaya's work – with her total devotion to exposing injustice – inspired her to join the paper. At the age of 16, and already working on her local paper in the provincial town of Yaroslav, not far from Moscow, Kostyuchenko read one of Politkovskaya's articles on Chechnya: it was a moment of revelation. "I was shocked. I realised that everything I knew about this country, about what was happening, was wrong," she says.
She moved to Moscow, enrolled as a journalism student and becameNovaya Gazeta's youngest ever staff member, aged 17. "When Politkovskaya was killed I realised I had never told her she was my idol." Now, she says, she praises colleagues to their face. Why? "You come to work, see your colleagues and think: 'Who's next?'" she says.
Kostyuchenko's commitment may be untypical among young Russians – most young Russians, indeed most Russians, show little or no interest in politics – but in recent months some observers have detected the first stirrings of popular unrest, especially in Russia's far east. While it's clear that currently the overwhelming majority of Russians have no appetite for storming the Kremlin, it is not known what impact the economic crisis will have on the population as inflation, rising unemployment and soaring food prices take their toll.
Novaya Gazeta's investigations include those into the murders of its own staff. The paper is carrying its own probe into Politkovskaya's murder – by a professional killer wearing a baseball cap in the stairwell of her Moscow flat – and last month published new details of CCTV footage taken outside the flat in the hours before her assassination.
Also last month, a jury acquitted four people accused of involvement in Polit kovskaya's death: two Chechen brothers, a former Moscow policeman, and a serving colonel with the FSB. All have links with Russia's security services, which monitored her flat in the days before she was killed. Politkovskaya's friends describe the trial as a "farce" and are scathing of the official investigation. Muratov, meanwhile, has refused to say who he thinks arranged Politkovskaya's death – amid suspicions that the person is a top figure in Russian politics.
Roman Shleynov, Novaya Gazeta's investigations editor, says in many cases the trail leads back to the Kremlin, but adds that western journalists often get it wrong when they write about Putin and his inner circle. What links together Putin's cronies is not the KGB – although many of them were in it – he says, but the fact that all of them knew Putin from his early days in St Petersburg.
Shleynov is dismissive of the idea that Putin has acquired a vast hidden fortune. Establishing who really owns what is often impossible, as "Russia is a country of non-formal links", he says. On the wall of his office is a spider-like diagram identifying some of the secret beneficiaries of one of the subsidiaries of Gazprom, Russia's state energy giant. Investigating is difficult, frustrating work.
Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, has talked repeatedly about the need to end corruption in Russia. Following the double murder of Markelov and Baburova, he invited Muratov and Gorbachev to discuss the paper's plight. The gesture was an interesting one, and Medvedev's rhetoric is different from Putin's. But so far nobody knows whether Medvedev is a real liberal or a fake one.
Visitors leaving the newspaper's offices pass a cabinet of memorabilia: Politkovksya's old computer, some of her books, a Christmas card from Bill Clinton and a tome on Japanese martial arts that belonged to Baburova. The young journalist never had a chance to use it before her killer shot her in the head.
The dissident press baron
Alexander Lebedev's sprawling business empire includes the LondonEvening Standard, two banks, a third of Russia's state airline Aeroflot and the German airline Blue Wings. He also has shares in Russia's energy conglomerate Gazprom. Other businesses include a luxury hotel in Italy, a London restaurant and a Russian potato farm. He also owns a ruined castle in the Italian city of Perugia.
In 2008 Forbes Russia put Lebedev's fortune at $3.1bn (then £1.55bn). The tycoon is now suing the American magazine after it dumped him out of its 2009 list, placing his fortune below $1bn. Lebedev rubbishes Forbes's valuation as "inaccurate" and "damaging". He says he has survived the global crisis better than many of his wealthy peers and is worth "more than $2bn".
Lebedev says he has no plans to acquire another British newspaper and describes his purchase of the Evening Standard as a "good way to lose money". But how long, some wonder, before he makes a bid for theIndependent?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/12/newspapers-russia
