Yelena Milashena-Moscow Times
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. Russian investigators on Wednesday said they had launched a criminal investigation after award-winning journalist Yelena Milashina was badly beaten in Chechnya.
Milashina, 45, covers rights abuses in Chechnya, the Caucasus republic ruled for years by Ramzan Kadyrov, a former warlord.
Milashina, who reports for Russia’s top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and Alexander Nemov, a lawyer, were badly beaten this week in the restive republic of Chechnya.
She is in a “difficult” condition in a Moscow hospital, her editor told AFP earlier in the day.
The Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said in a statement it opened a criminal inquiry into the intentional infliction of “moderate” bodily harm and “light” bodily harm.
The top investigator in Chechnya, Vitaly Volkov, told the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, that the investigation had been launched following a preliminary probe.
Genuine official investigations into rights abuses are very rare in Chechnya. International media advocates and rights groups voiced concern after Milashina said she had been battered and held at gunpoint with Nemov during a work trip to the volatile region in southern Russia.
“Milashina is in Moscow in hospital. Her condition is, frankly, difficult: she was really severely beaten,” Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, told AFP reporters.
Novaya Gazeta published a video of Milashina in hospital with her head shaven and her hands bandaged. Nemov received a knife wound in the assault.
In a video interview, the journalist said around 10 to 15 attackers had beaten her with plastic pipes. Milashina said that authorities routinely used such pipes to attack detainees in Chechnya. She said she had written about the practice before and now experienced it for the first time.
“It is a powerful weapon,” she said in the video, smiling. “It really hurt.”
The attackers, who demanded she reveal her phone password, also threatened to break her fingers.
She said the assault was linked to her work with Nemov, adding she heard the attackers telling the lawyer: “You defend too many people here.”
She also said they shaved her head and poured a green-colored dye over her.
The Kremlin and the strongman leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said those responsible should be identified.
On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said it would take time for a full probe to be conducted, and that investigators were carrying out their work.
“Let’s just wait. The reactions have all been voiced and now all actions are being taken,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Muratov said Milashina’s fingers were also injured, adding that “her condition is what you’d expect.”
Since 2000, Novaya Gazeta has seen six of its journalists and contributors killed, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow on President Vladimir Putin’s birthday.
A prominent Russian journalist and lawyer have been hospitalized after being badly beaten on a visit to Russia’s republic of Chechnya, the rights groups Memorial and the Crew Against Torture (CAT) said early Tuesday.
Yelena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov arrived in the Chechen capital of Grozny to attend the court hearing of the mother of a prominent Chechen activist when their car was reportedly blocked on the way from the airport.
An armed group kicked and threatened to shoot Milashina and Nemov, CAT said, adding that the group also seized and destroyed the pair’s personal electronic devices.
Memorial noted that the attackers had shaved Milashina’s head and covered it in green dye.
Head of CAT Sergei Babinets later published a photo of the journalist, saying Milashina was talking over the phone with Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova. “You’ve been warned. Get out of here and don’t write anything,” Memorial quoted the assailants as saying.
Milashina was hospitalized in Grozny with broken fingers, the rights groups said. Nemov was also hospitalized and had difficulty speaking and moving.
The two were later transferred to a hospital in Beslan, a city in the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, on the orders of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov after he spoke with Moskalkova by phone, CAT said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin was informed of the attack on Milashina and Nemov and called for “energetic measures” to be taken in response.
Later Tuesday, Kadyrov said he had “instructed the competent services to make every effort to identify the attackers.”
“The authorities started to work immediately after the incident was reported,” he wrote on his official Telegram channel.
Milashina, who has extensively covered Chechnya for the disbanded independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was previously attacked alongside another lawyer in Grozny in February 2020.
Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist since 2007, had blasted Novaya Gazeta reporters who investigated alleged disappearances in his region as “devils” in the run-up to the attack on Milashina.
Milashina is known for breaking the story of anti-gay purges in Chechnya, a conservative and predominantly Muslim region, in 2017.
Nemov represents Zarema Musaeva, who faces up to 5.5 years in prison on charges of fraud and assaulting the authorities. Musaeva is the wife of a retired federal judge and the mother of rights lawyer and activist Abubakar Yangulbaev.
In January 2022, she was violently detained and forcibly transported to Chechnya, where she had been deprived of access to the insulin she needs to manage her diabetes.
Her exiled son Yangulbaev and his brothers, Baysangur and Ibrahim, are vocal critics of Kadyrov.
