The gov didn't shut them down directly, but the visit from the guys in Soviet-style suits caused all the money people to run away, bankrupting the paper. Which means that the gov shut down the paper indirectly because they didn't like its contents. What do you call that?
.............
I appreciate Ames' matter-of-fact description of the situation, free of the usual heavy breathing (Russia! Authoritarianism! Putin! Fascism!).
And although boddhi has glommed onto this as evidence of...something, as Michael Perelman points out using the example of closed marijuana dispensaries, none of the tactics Ames faced should be unfamiliar to Americans. (A friend in California lost a nightclub because of police assisted pressure tactics from a rival - visits from men in suits, dark warnings, etc. Just another day in the big city).
This is what governments do; they use whatever power is at their disposal (legal or extra) to quiet real and imagined trouble makers for a constellation of reasons, both obvious and obscure.
Surely, Moscow's no different. What's the big deal about fessing up to that?
.d.