Derk Sauer, Dutch media entrepreneur and founder of The Moscow Times, passed away in the Netherlands on Thursday.

Sauer, who moved to Moscow during the twilight of the Soviet Union, was responsible for founding Vedomosti, the first Western-style business daily in Russia, founding The Moscow Times and launching the Russian versions of publications like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and Playboy.

After the news of his death was announced, tributes from independent Russian media and other journalists began pouring in, recounting the impact Sauer had on their careers and on Russian media as a whole.

“The success of the magazines made possible a breakthrough in quality journalism — the launch of the daily newspaper Vedomosti in September 1999. Derk assembled this venture by uniting two fierce rivals — The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times — that were unwilling to risk going it alone in a market then dominated by Kommersant, itself unable to fill more than two pages with business news,” wrote Leonid Bershidsky, Vedomosti’s first editor-in-chief, in Meduza.

“Neither Sauer nor his partners wanted Soviet journalists leading the newsroom… On the day that Derk and I flew to Zurich for Vedomosti’s first board meeting, my deputy, Alexander Gordeyev, who was also scheduled to fly with us, was arrested after a street fight. Sauer demanded that I fire Gordeyev but took no action when I refused. He gave second chances — and third chances — to everyone who didn’t sell out and worked for him as if it were their company,” Bershidsky continued.

“On the day Derk passed, Pavel Miledin, a former Vedomosti reporter, recalled how someone had carved height marks into the doorframe of our old newsroom on Vyborgskaya Street in Moscow. There was mine, and above that, a mark for the giant Sasha Gordeyev. And a meter above that, another inscription bore Derk’s name. He was not a tall man, but that mark was not a form of flattery. We still had a long way to grow to reach him. We fell short. Sauer outlived the independent Russian press, which, in my admittedly biased view, he himself created. But this is not the end. Derk, thanks to you, I believe in second chances. And third ones,” he wrote.

Russian journalist Xenia Lutchenko called Sauer “the man who created real Russian journalism.”

“And then, when everything he had believed in up to the last moment finally went to s***,” she wrote, “He saved dozens of journalists and very important institutions: TV Rain, The Moscow Times, and partly Meduza. These are the fates, living people; these are the projects; this is the truth about Russia, about the war, about what happened and is happening to us; this is the value of freedom of speech and the hope for revival, return, normalization.”

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya, the founder of independent business outlet The Bell who served as RBC’s editor-in-chief while Sauer was its director, wrote a lengthy tribute, calling Sauer the “godfather of the journalism and media business.”

“Derk did the most important thing: he created a system of values and relationships in which it was possible to practice honest journalism, take pride in it and earn a living at the same time. This is called a business model. In Russia, the wheels began to turn in the early 2000s, when a significant number of businesspeople believed that, as Vedomosti’s first advertisement said, ‘An oligarch can buy a newspaper. At a newsstand’,” Osetinskaya wrote on her Telegram channel.

“I ask myself: is there anyone who has done more for the development of independent media in Russia than Derk? The answer is obvious to me,” she said.

Amsterdam-based TV Rain also released a statement thanking Sauer for his help in relocating their newsroom to the Netherlands at a time when the channel’s survival seemed uncertain.

“We would hardly be on the air today if it weren’t for his support,” they wrote. “He didn’t have to do it, but he suddenly became a friend to dozens of TV Rain employees and their families when he helped us restart in Amsterdam and continue our work. And along with them, he became a friend to 25 million TV Rain viewers and readers around the world. For one simple reason: he believed it was important.”

“Derk, our gratitude for what you did for all of us knows no bounds. We will always remember this and always be grateful,” TV Rain’s statement read.

Even Vedomosti, the now-tightly controlled outlet he founded in 1999, paid tribute. Its editorial board called him “a man of left-wing convictions in the sense that he was generous and shared his profit with his employees.”

“Without any obligations, in the mid-2000s he gave away $2.7 million to the employees of Independent Media. ‘I,’ recalls one Vedomosti employee, ‘was able to buy my first car with that money’…”

“Derk was a unique manager, according to employees who worked with him at Vedomosti: natural and direct, very attentive to detail, always ready to listen to any issue. He personally got to know all the new employees.”