Translated material
Republic has given up its media license
The Republic publication, on its own initiative, refused the status of a media outlet registered with Roskomnadzor, editorial board.
“We have decided that at the present time, the status of a media outlet registered in Russia entails too many meaningless obligations (labels of media outlets as ‘foreign agents’, stricter censorship restrictions, etc.) and does not actually provide any additional rights,” the journalists write.
The publication will continue to operate without registration.
In October 2021, the Ministry of Justice added the legal entity Republic — Moscow Digital Media LLC — to the register of media outlets — “foreign agents.” The Ministry made this decision because the publication received subscription payments from foreign embassies and organizations — the embassies of Switzerland, France, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, the consulate of Finland, as well as the Wall Street Journal bureau, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, and the Kazakhstani company Eurasia Metals Company.
On March 3, the editor-in-chief of Republic Dmitry Kolezev made a statement about emigration. The next day, the journalists of the publication announced that after the adoption of the Russian army and the risks of criminal prosecution, they would no longer cover the war in Ukraine.
told reported the law on "fakes" At the same time, a few days later, Roskomnadzor, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, the website of the publication. The document stated that Republic and several other media outlets blocked that day publish information that "does not correspond to reality, creates panic among people, and creates a threat of mass disruption of public order."
blocked
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Roskomnadzor has blocked more than 7,000 websites, according to Roskomsvoboda as of August 23. In early August, Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov told Kommersant that since February 24, at the request of prosecutors, about 138 thousand Internet resources have been blocked in Russia. “After the start of the “special military operation,” we have stepped up efforts to counter the spread of calls for extremism and terrorism, mass riots, and “fake” news on the Internet,” he said.