Mr Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said a thug threw acetone paint all over his sleeping area on the train bound for the city of Samara from Moscow on Thursday. Images posted by the newspaper on social media showed him covered in red paint. “My eyes are burning terribly,” Muratov said after the incident, adding that the perpetrator shouted “Muratov, this is for our boys,” according to a Telegram report. A head of Russian investigative journalism since the 1990s and known as an ardent critic of the Kremlin, Muratov received the Nobel Peace Prize last year along with Filipino journalist Maria Resa for his struggle for press freedom under difficult circumstances. Several activists reported threatening messages painted on the doors of their apartments in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Novaya Gazeta, an independent investigative newspaper, announced last week that it was suspending its online and print activities until the end of what Russia calls a “special operation” in Ukraine following growing pressure from the state communications regulator. The newspaper is not foreign to the attacks. In 2018, a beheaded ram was handed over to the newspaper’s headquarters, addressing a reporter who wrote about groups of mercenaries linked to the Kremlin. In 2020, an perpetrator sprayed a chemical on the doors of the newspaper’s offices. Since the start of the war on February 24, Moscow has launched a crackdown on liberal Russian media, with most state-owned organizations sticking to the language used by the Kremlin to report the invasion. Earlier in March, Russian lawmakers passed a law threatening to sentence journalists to up to 15 years in prison for publishing “fake news” about the invasion. Harsh censorship has forced many Western media outlets, including the BBC and Bloomberg, to suspend operations in Russia. In retaliation, the United Kingdom and its Western allies imposed sanctions on state-controlled Sputnik News, Russia Today and other prominent media outlets for spreading “misinformation”. Western social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have also been banned in Russia. Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, expressing “grave concern about the ongoing crisis over human rights and the humanitarian crisis.” The Independent has a proud campaign history for the rights of the most vulnerable and we first launched our “Welcome Refugees” campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and start this report on In the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we call on the government to move faster and faster to secure aid. To learn more about our Refugee Campaign, click here. To sign the application click here. If you would like to donate, click here for our GoFundMe page.
