A Nobel Prize for one Russian compromise

There’s plenty of symbolism to Russian editor Dmitry Muratov’s (shared) Nobel Peace Prize. The media outlet he edits, Novaya Gazeta, started, in a way, with another Nobel — Mikhail Gorbachev’s: He spent part of his 1990 Peace Prize to buy computers for the Novaya start-up in 1993. The award also comes almost exactly 15 years after Novaya journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in Moscow; she was one of several at the publication to lose their lives as a result of their reporting.
And yet, as much as Politkovskaya, for example, may have deserved such a distinction for her courageous coverage of the war in Chechnya, Muratov’s prize — meant to support independent Russian journalism at a time when President Vladimir Putin’s regime appears to be out to eradicate it — sends entirely the wrong message. In 2019, Proekt, an independent Russian investigative project, published a long story about the unusual links between Sergei Chemezov, an old friend of Putin’s and head of the giant Rostec State Corp, and various “liberals.” The story alleged that Chemezov, who is also friendly with Muratov, had been funding Novaya via his business partner Sergey Adonyev; in exchange, a special approval procedure allegedly existed at the publication for stories about Chemezov and Rostec, and some Novaya journalists ended up publishing their exposes of the Putin crony elsewhere. Muratov flatly denied taking money from Chemezov or doing him any favours, but is quoted by Proekt admitting that Adonyev was a sponsor.
That’s an interesting enough association, though. As part of its research into the Russian part of the so-called Pandora Papers, the investigative outfit Important Stories alleged that in 2012, Adonyev lent his yacht — free of charge — to Anton Vaino, soon to become Putin’s chief of staff; a long-standing Chemezov associate was allegedly along for the ride.
Proekt was banned by the Russian government earlier this year as an “undesirable organisation” and its journalists were declared “foreign agents”; editor Roman Badanin was forced into emigration. Important Stories and its journalists have also been designated as “foreign agents,” making it near impossible for them to interview Russian officials. They are obliged to refer to the designation in every story and social media post and to account for every penny spent to the Russian Justice Ministry. This is what happens to independent journalists in 2021 Russia; Muratov dedicated his prize to the assassinated Novaya journalists and the “foreign agents” — in the full knowledge that nothing of the kind can happen to him. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov commented thus on Muratov’s Nobel: “We can congratulate Dmitry Muratov, he has been consistently true to his ideals in his work. He is talented, he is courageous. And of course, this is a high distinction. We congratulate him.” Asked whether Putin would send his personal greetings, Peskov replied, “Give it time.” When Russian-speaking Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich, a sworn enemy of the Putin regime, won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 and immediately spoke about the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine, Kremlin felicitations weren’t forthcoming. “I’m sure everyone is congratulating her on winning the Nobel prize,” Peskov said then. “But Svetlana probably lacks the information she would need for a positive assessment of the situation in Ukraine.”

—Bloomberg