The Kremlin is shutting down Russia’s last free newspaper

Meaning:Crestfallen describes someone who is sad and disappointed, especially after hoping for something that did not happen. The word comes from a proud bird whose crest, or head feathers, droops when it is beaten. In the article, the camerawoman filming the newsroom's last days is crestfallen because the paper she loves is being closed down.

Meaning:To commemorate something is to honour the memory of a person or event with a ceremony, a statue, or a special day. It is used for things worth remembering, often sad or important ones. Here, the paper's publisher was travelling to Paris to mark twenty years since the killing of the reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

Meaning:Escalation is a step-by-step increase in how serious, intense, or dangerous something becomes, like climbing an escalator. It is often used for conflicts: each side does something harsher than before. In the article, a break-in and a threat of arrests showed the pressure on the newspaper was getting much more dangerous, so the staff decided to close.

Law and politics. Some governments do not need to ban a newspaper outright. Instead they attach a legal label that makes it nearly impossible to work. In Russia, a “foreign agent” is a person or group the state says is under foreign influence. The label brings heavy paperwork, special warnings that must appear on everything published, and a stigma that scares away advertisers and donors. In this story it also meant the paper's money channels would be blocked.

The next rung is “extremist organisation”. This is the label Novaya Gazeta's staff feared. Once a group is declared extremist, merely belonging to it, or even sharing its work, can become a crime, so its “members” can be arrested. That is why the editor told staff to leave their phones outside the meeting: the paper was about to move from being a nuisance to being treated like an enemy.

The pattern is useful beyond Russia: labels let a government say it is just applying the law while it squeezes a critic out of existence, step by step, as in the eviction, the blocked money, the detention and the break-in.

Civics. Censorship means a government (or another powerful group) controlling what people may publish or read. Press freedom is the opposite: reporters can investigate and print the truth, including facts that embarrass those in power. Many constitutions promise it, as Russia's does in Article 29, but a promise on paper means little if the state can ignore it.

Why does it matter? A free press is a country's early-warning system. Novaya Gazeta reported the war in Chechnya, showed that regular Russian soldiers were fighting in Donbas in 2014, and traced the Wagner group to its owner. When a press is silenced, citizens lose the facts they need to judge their leaders.

Censorship can be loud or clever. After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia criminalised the word “war”, so the paper printed a front page with the headline “No Words” followed by blank sheets, a protest made out of absence. Readers bought up the entire run. The paper's closing shows what the Economist calls the demolishing of the few remaining free public spaces.