Putin took away printing houses that Dmitry Muratov could manage

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, by his decree transferred the printing house “Prime Print”, belonging to the Norwegian holding Amedia, to the temporary management of the Moscow government.

Earlier, the Norwegian holding announced that it would leave Russia due to its aggression against Ukraine, handed over control of its printing houses in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, at that time the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta.

The day before, the Zamoskvoretskyi court of Moscow rejected Muratov’s lawsuit against the Russian Ministry of Justice with the demand to exclude him from the register of so-called foreign agents. The agency included him there in early September, the official motivation for such a decision being the journalist’s participation “in the creation and dissemination of materials by foreign agents” and “the use of foreign platforms” to express opinions “aimed at forming a negative attitude toward Russian politics.”

At the meeting of the Zamoskvorets court, the representative of the Ministry of Justice stated again that Muratov gave interviews to foreign mass media from “unfriendly countries”, which, from the point of view of the department, “precludes the distribution of materials about Russia in a positive or neutral way.”

• In April, Vladimir Putin signed a decree that actually allows for the nationalization of the assets of foreign companies in Russia. According to statements in the Kremlin, the document was developed as a response to the seizure of Russian assets abroad.
• In July, shares of foreign shareholders in the “Baltika” brewing company and the Danone concern were transferred to the temporary management of Rosymuschestvo. Yakub Zakriev, the nephew of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, became the general director of Danon Russia LLC.