The official newspaper of the Russian government is an unlikely source of recognition for a European news outlet critical of Vladimir Putin and providing sanctuary to exiled Russian journalists. But in May, two days after Russia tested its new intercontinental ballistic missile system nicknamed “Satan II” by Nato, an article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta prompted celebrations in a remote newsroom in the Arctic.
The story about how “leading global media” reacted to the Sarmat missile test referred to just a handful of outlets including the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press and France 24. But among them was the Barents Observer, a small, journalist-owned online newspaper publishing in English and Russian about northern Russia and the Euro-Arctic region from a modest office in the north-eastern Norwegian town of Kirkenes.
It was especially surprising given that the publication had been declared an “undesirable organisation” by the office of Russia’s prosecutor general, and half of its staff journalists are on Russia’s wanted list.
Its editor, Thomas Nilsen, said: “We were listed among what the Russian government newspaper itself called ‘leading global media’. That was a very good day at the Barents Observer, because it means we had reached into the inner circle of the Kremlin.”
Last week the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, held a call with Putin, marking a rare moment of contact between the Russian president and European leaders. Afterwards, Støre said there were “big differences in views” with Putin.
This certainly applies when it comes to press freedom. A few days later, the Nobel prize-winning independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta was forced to close, citing intolerable pressure from authorities.
A short drive from the Norway-Russia border and the only remaining legal land border crossing from Russia into the European Schengen free travel area, Kirkenes is a place where rising tensions with Moscow are felt acutely. But since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine the town has also become a refuge for Russians who have found themselves targeted by Putin’s regime – some of whom are journalists who have been hired by the Barents Observer.
Recently, the journalist Denis Zagore, originally from the Russian city of Murmansk, appeared in the Russian interior ministry’s database, accused of involvement with an “undesirable” organisation and failing to comply with the legal requirements for “foreign agents”. Officials in Murmansk have filed a motion to detain Zagore in absentia.
He is the third Barents Observer journalist living in exile in Kirkenes to be added to Russia’s wanted list. Despite this, like the rest of his colleagues he remains determined to continue his work unaffected.
“I can’t say this came as a surprise, given that the actions of the Russian state are quite predictable and the initiation of criminal cases was only a matter of time,” he said in an interview. “I don’t intend to change anything in my life because of this. Besides, they could have found me without declaring me wanted.”
Zagore’s entry on to the Russian list of targets came after his colleague Olesia Krivtsova was sentenced in absentia in July to six years in a penal colony on charges of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting” the Russian army.
Last year, the paper’s news editor, Farida Kurbangaleeva, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian army and “justifying terrorism”. She had previously been labelled a “foreign agent” and an unsuccessful extradition request was made to the Czech Republic where she was living at the time.
Another Barents Observer journalist, Georgii Chentemirov, has also been added to the “foreign agents” registry, criminally charged and fined.
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In the newspaper’s office, staff try to make light of the threats and intimidation by making a “wanted” wall with pictures from their Russian wanted listings. While they have been living and working with pressure from across the border for years, Nilsen said there had been a “dramatic escalation” in the last few months.
“We are living very close to the border, so we probably saw things earlier than the rest of Europe,” he said. But as a journalist, what concerns him most is the way the Russian president is trying to assert Russian media control beyond his own borders by targeting publications and exiled journalists in Europe.
Often when people are targeted by Russian authorities, he said, they remove their names from public view and stop criticising the war in Ukraine on social media.
At the Barents Observer, they try to react by doing the opposite. “We maintain that Putin is not a threat to us, we are a threat to him. Free and independent journalism is a threat to any dictatorship,” Nilsen said.
Since being labelled a criminal organisation, making it a crime for people in Russia to speak with its journalists, the newspaper has had to work even harder to get around the restrictions on its reporting. Its journalists do so using open sources, talking to people who are crossing the border, using satellite images, monitoring flight and shipping radars and speaking to exiled Russians. “I don’t want to say that this is easy. It’s getting harder and harder every day. But still possible,” Nilsen said.
But they now face legal action in the high court in London from the Russian billionaire Vitaly Orlov, which they fear could bankrupt the newspaper. The complaint centres on five news stories published between 2025 and 2026 about Norebo, a fishing company that Orlov co-founded and of which he is the majority owner.
Krivtsova, 23, was a 19-year-old student when she escaped house arrest in Arkhangelsk, Russia, by cutting off her electronic ankle bracelet and fleeing via Belarus to Lithuania. A criminal case was opened against her after she reposted a message online about an explosion on the Crimean Bridge and was openly critical of the war.
When she first spoke to the Guardian at the newspaper’s office in Kirkenes in 2023, she had recently been hired as a journalist there. She arrived suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. “I was really afraid to be detained, captured, somehow sent to Russia,” she said.
Now, despite her recent sentencing, she speaks with cool pragmatism. “It doesn’t matter actually for Russian special services where you are. It doesn’t matter if you are in Kirkenes, Australia or somewhere else,” she said. “If they want to kill you, if they want to poison you or capture you, they will find you.”
