The United States is appalled by the brutal beating of renowned journalist Yelena Milashina and attorney Alexander Nemov in Chechnya on July 4. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called on the Russian government to “conduct a prompt, impartial, and transparent investigation into the circumstances of this savage attack and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”
Ms. Milashina and Mr. Nemov were attacked on their way to a court sentencing of a mother of three exiled Chechen government critics in the capital, Grozny. “They beat us up two times,” Ms. Milashina said in a recorded interview with her employer Novaya Gazeta, one of the last independent media outlets in Russia.
Ms. Malishina described how a group of masked men in several cars ambushed the vehicle she and Mr. Nemov were driving in. The attackers pulled Ms. Milashina from the car and kicked and then beat her with plastic pipes, shaved her head, and dumped green dye on her. “I don’t have any wounds, thank God, just bruises.” Mr. Nemov was beaten and stabbed with a knife, according to the Novaya Gazeta.
Milashina has a long history of exposing human rights abuses in Chechnya, which has resulted in death threats being issued against her by Chechnya’s notorious leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. Indeed, Milashina had to flee Russia for a period time in February 2022 after Kadyrov had called her a terrorist, saying "we have always eliminated terrorists and their accomplices.” In 2020, she was attacked along with another attorney, Marina Dubrovina.
Ms. Milashina, a winner of the State Department’s 2013 International Woman of Courage Award, “has covered many of Russia’s most controversial subjects with passion, fairness, and dedication,” said spokesperson Miller. “Violently attacking her for performing her duties as a journalist is an affront to respect for freedom of expression, a fundamental freedom enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” he declared.
The attack against Ms. Milashina is the latest in a pattern of violence against prominent investigative journalists in Russia that has met little resistance from the authorities.
The Russian government continues to violate not just its international human rights obligations and commitments, but also the most fundamental vows it made to its people in its constitution. The people of Russia deserve better.
