‘We are a threat to Putin’: the small Norwegian news outlet with half its staff on Russia’s wanted list

Exiled journalists at the Barents Observer face growing intimidation as Moscow seeks to control media beyond its bordersThe 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. Continue reading...