Armed thugs beat up Russian reporter, lawyer

An award-winning Russian investigative journalist was in hospital after being badly beaten Tuesday by armed assailants during a trip to Chechnya, her media outlet and human rights groups said.

“Elena Milashina’s fingers have been broken and she is sometimes losing consciousness. She has bruises all over her body,” the Memorial human rights group said on social media.

The attack happened early on Tuesday as Milashina and Alexander Nemov, a lawyer, were travelling from the airport.

The Committee Against Torture, another human rights group, published photos of Milashina in hospital with her head shaved and covered in a green-coloured dye — used to target Kremlin critics — and her hands bandaged.

In a video, Milashina could be seen lying on a hospital bed recounting her ordeal.

“They came, they threw out the driver, the taxi driver from the car. They jumped in, pushed our heads down, they tied my hands, put us on our knees with a gun to the head,” she said.

“They did everything nervously. They didn’t manage to tie my hands properly,” she added.

– Death threats –

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a briefing that President Vladimir Putin had been informed of the incident.

“We are talking about a very serious attack that requires vigorous measures,” Peskov said.

The media rights group Reporters Without Borders said it was “horrified by the savage attack” on Milashina.

Milashina’s paper Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s top independent publication, said she and Nemov were currently in hospital in the Chechen capital Grozny.

Novaya Gazeta said she was in Grozny to attend the sentencing of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of three exiles critical of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.

Musayeva was detained by Chechen forces in January last year in Nizhny Novgorod — a city 1,800 kilometres (1,120 miles) north of Grozny.

Novaya Gazeta in February last year said Milashina had to leave Russia temporarily after receiving death threats from the Chechen leadership.

Milashina has covered rights abuses in Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta for years.

Novaya Gazeta, whose chief editor Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, has since 2000 seen six journalists and contributors killed, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

By focusing on rights abuses in Chechnya, Milashina has followed in the footsteps of Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the Kremlin’s policies in Chechnya, who was shot dead in 2006.

Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that the incident “should be carefully investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice”.

Moskalkova said Milashina was being taken to another hospital in a nearby region.

“The security of the journalist will be fully guaranteed,” Moskalkova said.