Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Dimitri Muratov, editor-in-chief of the government-critical Novaya Gazeta newspaper, was not a “shield” that could protect him from his status as “foreign agent. ”.
Muratov, who heads the teams of the daily Novaya Gazeta, received the Nobel Peace Prize last week together with the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, in a context of increasing repression of independent media in Russia.
Among the instruments of this repression is the attribution of the status of “foreign agent”, given to numerous journalists and media critical of the Kremlin. This designation greatly complicates their work.
If Muratov “does not violate Russian law, if he does not give reasons to justify being declared an agent of the foreigner, then this will not happen,” Putin said Wednesday during an energy forum in Moscow.
The Russian head of state asked that Muratov not “use the Nobel Prize as a shield” to violate Russian law and “attract attention.”
“Whatever its merit, everyone must understand this: you have to submit to Russian laws,” he insisted.
NGOs regularly denounce pressures against the media in Russia, a country that ranks 150 out of 180 in the latest index of press freedom published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Novaya Gazeta is one of the last independent bastions of the Russian media landscape.
The newspaper is famous above all for its investigations into corruption and human rights violations in Chechnya.
Novaya Gazeta’s engagement has cost the lives of six of its collaborators since the 1990s, including the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya, assassinated in 2006.
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