An independent news website, Meduza, which has been critical of Russia’s military action in Ukraine was declared “undesirable” by the government Thursday, effectively outlawing its operation within the country as part of the Kremlin’s latest crackdown on dissent.
Russia’s General Prosecutor, in a statement, said that Meduza “poses a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and the security of the Russian Federation”.
What is Meduza?
Founded in 2014 and based in Latvia, Meduza for years has been one of the most popular independent Russian-language news sites, with an audience of millions. The site was blocked in Russia nearly a year ago, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began, along with websites of multiple other independent news outlets. It can still be accessed through virtual private networks.
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Meduza’s troubles began in 2021 after the Russian authorities put the news outlet on a list of “foreign agents”. The decision stripped it of local advertisers and forced the organisation to raise money through crowdfunding, according to a report by Indian Express.
Things worsened last year, when Meduza, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, published an editorial condemning Moscow’s move. The website was blocked in the country and accused of “systematic dissemination of fakes”.
Russia's crackdown
The decision by the prosecutor-general’s office came on the same day that the publisher of the Mediazona website, which reports on the legal system and law enforcement, said he was charged in absentia with spreading false and defamatory information about the Russian military.
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Russian authorities also evicted from its property a human rights center named in honor of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, and they closed the country’s oldest human rights organization.
The Russian prosecutor-general’s order said Meduza’s activities presented “a threat to the foundations of the Russian Federation’s constitutional order and national security.”
The decision applies specifically to the Medusa Project organization, which publishes Meduza. The declaration exposes its journalists and managers to prosecution, as well as people who comment to reporters and readers who share links to articles on social media.
“It is a very bad status,” Editor-in-Chief Ivan Kolpakov told The Associated Press on Thursday in an interview.
“It is simply ridiculous to talk about our work as a threat to Russia’s constitutional order,” Kolpakov added.
A law passed in 2015 allows Russia to declare foreign organizations undesirable, effectively prohibiting them from operating in Russia, and to subject Russians who are tied to them to fines and imprisonment. The law is a companion to a measure that requires organizations in Russia that receive foreign funding to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” potentially undermining their credibility.
Both laws have been used to stifle or discredit dissent.
Meduza had already been declared a foreign agent and was obliged to publish a banner acknowledging the designation on its stories.
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Despite being blocked, Meduza managed to keep its large audience, Kolpakov said, and that’s what, in his view, prompted the decision to declare it undesirable.
Authorities “were extremely frustrated that Meduza continued to operate, retained the audience, journalists in Russia, extensive coverage of Russian developments,” he said.
The move is intended to intimidate, he added, but the team is not giving up.
“The assumption is that it will be very hard to work, much harder than before, but, nevertheless, there is no desire to break up,” Kolpakov said.
Meduza is not the first independent news outlet to be declared undesirable, but it is arguably the biggest and the best known. The investigative outlet Proekt was outlawed as undesirable in 2021. Two other investigative sites, Vazhnye Istorii and The Insider, were slapped with the label last year.
