RUSSIALINK: “Facing Heightened Threats, Russia’s Main Independent Paper Contemplates a Bleak Future” – Moscow Times

The latest attack on Novaya Gazeta is making some of its editors wonder how long it can survive in the country.

On the way to work at Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta last Monday morning, journalists noticed a strong chemical stench on the street outside their central Moscow office. By the time they sat down at their desks they had spread a clear, noxious substance throughout the building on the soles of their shoes.

Only months after opposition leader Alexei Navalny was near-fatally poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, the apparent chemical attack struck fear into many of the paper's staff. Days later, an elite Chechen regiment released a video interpreted as claiming the attack and demanding Russian President Vladimir Putin punish Novaya Gazeta for reporting on extrajudicial killings in the autonomous region.

"We will continue with our investigations," the paper's long-serving editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov told The Moscow Times.

"That is our answer to these threats."

For Novaya Gazeta — for decades Russia's leading investigative newspaper and known for breaking stories on the downing of flight MH17 and alleged gay purges in Chechnya — the attack came as a reminder of the risk its independence carries at a time when the Kremlin's tolerance for Russia's few remaining independent media outlets appears to be waning.

For the paper's journalists, threats of violence for reporting on Chechnya are nothing new.

When the Russian government in 1994 went to war against separatists in Chechnya — a small, mountainous region on Russia's southern Caucasian flank — Novaya Gazeta, founded only a year before, got its first big break.

"From its earliest days, Novaya has staked a lot of its reputation on the...