The Moscow Times is an independent English-language and Russian-language online newspaper. It was in print in Russia from 1992 until 2017 and was distributed free of charge at places frequented by English-speaking tourists and expatriates such as hotels, cafés, embassies, and airlines, and also by subscription. The newspaper was popular among foreign citizens residing in Moscow and English-speaking Russians. In November 2015 the newspaper changed its design and type from daily to weekly (released every Thursday) and increased the number of pages to 24. The newspaper became online-only in July 2017 and launched its Russian-language service in 2020. In 2022, its headquarters were relocated to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in response to restrictive media laws passed in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The website was later banned in Russia. Some foreign correspondents started their careers at the paper, including Ellen Barry, who later became The New York Times Moscow bureau chief. History Founding Derk Sauer, a Dutch publisher who came to Moscow in 1989, made plans to turn his small, twice-weekly paper called the Moscow Guardian into a world-class daily newspaper. Sauer brought in Meg Bortin as its first editor in May 1992, and the team used a room at the Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel as its headquarters. The Moscow Times was founded in 1992 by Sauer to reach US and European expats who had moved to Moscow after the fall of communism. He said: "It was a completely different time, there was no internet and there was a huge influx of Western expats who didn't speak Russian. At the time, they were the only ones with money in Moscow, so The Moscow Times was an interesting medium for advertisers". The first edition of The Moscow Times was published in March 1992. It was the first Western daily to be published in Russia, and quickly became "a primary source of news and opinion" quoted in both Russia and the West. It "played an important role by giving space to Russian commentators". For example, in the fall of 1993, it was able to play a role in defeating the censors: when anti-Yeltsin forces occupied the Russian Parliament and censorship was revived. Russian newspapers came out with large blank spaces on their front pages where articles critical of the authorities had been suppressed. The writers of those articles came to see us. Published the next day in English in The Moscow Times,