7/5/2023 1:52 pm (act. 7/5/2023 1:52 pm)
Elena Milashina shaved and painted ©APA/The Crew Against Torture
After the attack on the Russian journalist of “Novaya Gazeta” Elena Milashina in Chechnya, her condition remains worrying. “Their condition is frankly difficult,” Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov told the AFP news agency on Wednesday. Milashina was therefore transferred to a Moscow hospital. Muratov said the attackers beat Milashina with batons, broke her fingers and demanded access to her cell phone.
Several men carried out the attack on Milashina on Tuesday, and the investigative journalist was seriously injured. After the attack, the Russian human rights organization Memorial reported that Milashina’s fingers were broken, that she had bruises “all over her body” and that she was temporarily losing consciousness. She was initially treated at a hospital in the Chechen capital Grozny.
In a hospital video, Milashina described the incident: “They threw the taxi driver out, jumped in the car, pushed our heads down, tied my hands… and held a gun to our heads,” she said. The Russian human rights movement Committee Against Torture published pictures of Milashina in hospital. According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, the attackers shaved off her hair and dyed it green.
The ruler of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, assured on Tuesday that he instructed the responsible authorities “to do everything possible to identify the attackers”. Chechen Information Minister Akhmed Dudayev blamed the attack on “Western secret services” without providing any proof, but at the same time accused Milashina of having “insulted the Chechen security authorities for years”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the incident. It is a “very serious attack that requires strict measures”.
For years, award-winning investigative journalist Milashina has covered serious human rights violations in Chechnya, such as extrajudicial executions, for Novaya Gazeta. In February 2022, according to her newspaper, she had to leave Russia for a short period after threats from Kadyrov, who described her as a “terrorist”.
Six journalists and staff have been killed at Novaya Gazeta, whose editor Muratov has been awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize since 2000, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.