Dutch founder of Moscow Times dies after sailing accident

Derk Sauer, a Dutch journalist who founded The Moscow Times and became a prominent defender of independent Russian media, died on Thursday after a sailing accident last month, his family said. He was 72.

Sauer was instrumental in helping Russian independent journalism survive after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

As the Kremlin tightened wartime censorship, he relocated The Moscow Times to Amsterdam and supported exiled outlets such as TV Rain and Meduza.

The crackdown was no surprise for the veteran publisher, who had long warned of shrinking press freedoms in Russia.

In 2020, after Vedomosti, a Russian business newspaper, was taken over by a pro-Kremlin media owner and senior editors resigned over what they described as censorship, Sauer told AFP: “It’s tragic. It’s the end of Vedomosti as we know it.”

The development, he added, was “a much bigger tragedy for Russia”.

Sauer had co-founded Vedomosti as a joint venture with The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal in 1999.

It became one of Russia’s most respected newspapers, largely for its editorial independence.

But he was best known as the founder of The Moscow Times, which he launched in 1992, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The English-language newspaper was aimed at expatriates but gained a wide following for its reporting on Russian politics, business and society.

“In his final days, Derk asked me to thank every single person who helped make The Moscow Times the remarkable outlet that it is,” his son, Pjotr Sauer, said in a statement posted on Facebook.

“Of all his many ventures, MT (The Moscow Times) was always his greatest passion. His baby.”

Sauer also helped launch Independent Media in 1999, which introduced Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, Playboy and other Western magazines.

He sold The Moscow Times in 2005, but bought it back in 2017 and relaunched it as a digital outlet before moving it to The Netherlands.

Sauer was defiant after Russia named The Moscow Times news outlet an “undesirable organisation” in July 2024, outlawing its activities inside Russia.

“Of course, we will continue with our work as usual: independent journalism. That’s a crime in Putin’s Russia,” he said in a post on X.

Born in Amsterdam in 1952, Sauer was active in far-left politics in his youth and became a journalist for Dutch newspapers and the BBC.

He moved to Moscow in 1988 with his wife, Ellen Verbeek, and launched Moscow Magazine, one of the first glossies for foreigners in the Soviet Union.

He remained a well-known voice in Dutch media, writing columns and appearing regularly on national TV.

According to Dutch media Sauer injured his back in a sailing accident in Greece in June.

After initial treatment in Athens, he was brought to the Netherlands for further care. He died at his holiday home in Zeeland, surrounded by family.

He is survived by his wife and three sons.