However, in 1993 Dzhokar Dudayev, president of Chechnya's new, unrecognized secessionist government, attempted to convert the paper into an official publication of his party.
Muradov found work for a time teaching journalism at a local university, as well as reporting for a small regional publication.
In 1994, amid the growing violence of the First Chechen War, he and his family left Grozny for the relative safety of Moscow.
The Nazran offices of Groznensky Rabochy were searched by Russia's Federal Security Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs, while Wahhabi Chechen extremists declared a sentence of death for the paper's staff under Sharia law and began a series of threatening phone calls to the office.
[3] Muradov again moved with his family to Moscow to avoid the threats,[2] and the remainder of the Groznensky Rabochy staff spread out across Russia.
Muradov became a full-time correspondent for Kommersant, a Russian business daily, while continuing to contribute to the German paper Die Welt.
[7] The award citation praised Groznensky Rabochy as a "rare voice of reason" in the violence and distorted coverage of Chechnya, as well as Muradov's "refusal" to "become a mouthpiece for either side".