President Putin is not a loyal reader

Launched just three months after the Soviet collapse in March 1992, The Moscow Times became Russia’s first independent English-language newspaper - a crucial window into post-Soviet Russia and a launchpad for generations of journalists. Against all odds it endures today, operating in exile with only a skeleton staff.

 

Forced out by the Kremlin’s crackdown on independent media, the outlet works from a secret address on the outskirts of Amsterdam, continuing to publish across its Russian and English editions - even after the death of its founder, Dutch media magnate Derk Sauer, earlier this year.

“We’re working to keep journalism alive and to maintain the flow of information from Russia to the rest of the world, even as the country becomes increasingly closed off,” editor-in-chief Samantha Berkhead told the BJR. “Those goals do not change with Derk no longer with us.”

 

The paper went fully digital in 2017. Today, only a few reporters remain inside Russia, filing anonymously after the Kremlin labelled the outlet a “foreign agent” (twice) and an “undesirable organisation” (just once), making it illegal to work with or even speak to them.

 

Despite this, the newsroom continues to impress. “If you look at the volume and quality of the stories they produce in both English and Russian, they’re doing a very good job,” Pjotr Sauer, Derk’s son and a Guardian Russia affairs correspondent, said in an interview. “Surviving is, in itself, a statement to Moscow – to the Kremlin – that you cannot get rid of them. Expanding is another issue. Right now, it’s about survival.”

 

Audience numbers reflect that resilience: in 2023, users nearly doubled to 8.69 million, with 162 million page views. Telegram - now the outlet’s key distribution tool - jumped from 31,000 subscribers in late 2022 to nearly 115,000 by August 2025. On TikTok, the Russian-language service hit 117,000 subscribers, while the English edition grew to almost 800,000 followers on Facebook.

 

 

Derk, who died in July in a tragic sailing accident, was widely respected in journalistic circles. In his obituaries, the Association of European Journalists hailed him as a “media hero” and Meduza called him a “man of revolution”. 

 

His crowded funeral at the central Westerkerk in Amsterdam drew dignitaries including Wall St journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was imprisoned by Putin, footballer Ruud Gullit, and Russian music journalist Artemy Troitsky, along with Dutch friends and family, Russian aristocrats, and Moscow Times staff, past and present. A few still living inside Russia made the 15-hour journey from Moscow to attend, travelling through Istanbul due to international flight restrictions.

 

In a chapter he wrote for a book I co-edited, Kremlin Media Wars: Censorship and Control Since the Invasion of Ukraine (Routledge, 2025), Derk reflected on the hope that journalists could continue working through “a crack within the chaotic Kremlin bureaucracy”. He admitted he was shocked when that crack never appeared.

 

Reporting 2,500km from Moscow meant “no longer being able to breathe in the atmosphere, travel through Russia, consult sources discreetly, attend press conferences, and talk to everyday people,” he wrote. In this environment, he wondered whether The Moscow Times would drift into irrelevance - until the authorities’ escalating attempts to block it made clear the opposite was true. 

Russian authorities are expending enormous resources to build firewalls and ban access to its website - proof that its reporting is relevant now more than ever.

 

“I believe that the fact that they go to all that trouble to ultimately thwart just a handful of independent Russian journalists says a lot about our effectiveness,” Derk wrote. “Are we changing the course of history by doing this? The honest answer is no… But, still, our efforts are not in vain.”