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For more than three decades, Novaya Gazeta , Russia’s leading independent newspaper, chronicled Russia’s reality: the promise of democracy, the economic collapse, the boom years, the spreading corruption, the repression, the wars, and the rise of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. Throughout, Novaya Gazeta battled attempts at censorship, ranging from debilitating cyberattacks to the murder of six of its journalists, which Dmitry Muratov, the cofounder and former editor in chief, has described as “warlike casualties.” In April of 2022, not long after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Muratov was attacked, splashed with red paint and acetone while riding on a train. He underwent a series of surgeries and suffered vision loss.

As the war, and Russia’s crackdown on the press, intensified, Novaya Gazeta was muzzled, its website blocked, its newsroom raided, its top editor arrested.…