There is no life in Russia as long as Putin is president.” Yelena Miláshina said this in an interview with La Vanguardia in 2011, five years after the murder of Anna Politkóvskaya and two years after those of Natalia Estemírova and Anastasia Babúrova, all of them linked as journalists or human rights defenders to Nóvaya Gazeta (New Daily), one of the few independent Russian media. Like Milashina.
Yelena Milashina was brutally attacked last Tuesday as soon as she once again arrived in Grozny (Russian Republic of Chechnya) accompanied by the lawyer Alexander Némov, to attend a trial. Her cab was held up by a dozen gangsters, and they were both beaten up; Némov suffered a slight gash, and the journalist had her hair shaved off, sprayed with a green dye and tried to cut off her finger to access her electronic devices with her fingerprint.
The attackers did not achieve anything, and she even remembered yesterday with a certain humor, although it was to make one shudder, taking into account the precedents. In 2020, the investigative journalist suffered a beating in the lobby of her own hotel: the Chechen leader, Ramzán Kadírov, had threatened her with death for publishing that in the midst of the covid pandemic those affected were considered terrorists. Milashina also documented the kidnapping and murder of homosexuals in Chechnya, which earned her new threats. In 2022, she temporarily left Russia after making the most explicit threats, not only from Kadyrov, but also from her friend and Russian Duma deputy, Adam Delimjanov, today head of the Chechen division of the National Guard fighting in Ukraine. .
But, as she explained in a conversation with this newspaper almost twelve years ago, Yelena Milashina was not going to intimidate, despite the murder of half a dozen colleagues from her newspaper. She was determined to follow in the footsteps of Anna Politkovskaya, and this despite the fact that she, she said, “I don’t see a future for our country.” She feared the “KGB mentality” and the “Russian nationalism” that was taking hold, much more than Putin himself.
During this time, Nóvaya Gazeta – whose director, Dmitri Murátov, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, and has also suffered attacks – has had to move, as has the Dozhd television channel and other media; the Echo of Moscow radio station closed a year ago… The pressure on journalists is increasing, and some, from media outlets affiliated with the regime, have chosen to leave the country; They are part of a wave of Russian migration that Milashina already warned about.
The aggression on Tuesday has ended up having unpublished notes. Official and pro-government voices in Moscow have expressed outrage over the attack on journalists, and means were immediately put in place to transfer her and the lawyer Némov on a special flight. The case that brought them to Grozny, the trial of the wife of a former Chechen Supreme Court judge (she has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison), was a case that precisely provoked Adam Delimjanov’s threats to Milashina. Could there be behind this unusual defense of the journalist the intention to make the today too relevant Chechen bosses firm?
