Russian officials have opened a law enforcement investigation into the recent brutal assault of two prominent figures, Russian journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov.
The incident took place in the Southwestern Russian province of Chechnya on Tuesday when a group of masked assailants ambushed and attacked Milashina and Nemov outside of an airport. The pair had recently arrived in Chechnya by air to attend the trial of Zarema Musayeva, according to ABC News, the mother of two activists in the region who challenged provincial leadership.
That attack on the journalist and lawyer fits a consistent pattern of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Milashina has covered such abuses extensively over her career and has long faced threats and other attempts at intimidation.
The pair's car was surrounded as they attempted to leave the airport, at which point they were targeted by the masked attackers, who beat them with clubs, brandished guns, and destroyed their equipment.
Novaya Gazeta, the outlet that employs Milashina, reported that she suffered a brain injury and broken fingers, while Nemov suffered a large cut on his leg. The two were initially transported to a hospital in the Chechen capital city of Grozny, with the journalist describing the incident from her bed as resembling a "classic abduction" attempt, but Milashina said, the attackers seemed nervous and had trouble tying their hands.
"They threw the driver out of the car, got in, bent our heads down, tied my hands, forced me down to my knees and put a gun to my head," she explained.
In the wake of the brutal incident, Ramzan Kadyrov, the provincial governor of Chechnya, ordered law enforcement agencies to begin an investigation into the matter and to identify the masked perpetrators, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
"We'll figure it out," Kadyrov wrote on his official Telegram account. "I instructed the competent services to make every effort to identify the attackers. The authorities began work immediately after the news of the incident."
TASS further reported that Tatyana Moskalkova, the Commissioner for Human Rights for Russia, sent appeals concerning the attack to the country's Investigative Committee, the Kremlin's Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the regional Prosecutor's Office of Chechnya. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov called the incident "a very serious attack that requires quite energetic measures" and said that President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the matter.
Newsweek reached out to experts at the Council on Foreign Relations via email for comment.
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