Milashyna connected the attack in Grozny with the search for a Russian Guardsman from Chechnya

Novaya Gazeta journalist Yelena Milashyna believes that she and her lawyer, Alexander Nemov, were attacked in Grozny by the same Chechen law enforcement officers who were involved in the abduction of Russian Guard soldier Yasyn Khalidov. At the beginning of the summer, he disappeared in the Omsk region after being detained at the border with Kazakhstan. Milashyna wrote about this in her article on the Novaya Gazeta website.

According to Milashina, the Chechen policemen to whom the employees of the Center for Countering Extremism in Omsk handed over Khalidov, who was detained there, and the unknown people who attacked her and Nemov and severely beat them are “one and the same people.” Most likely, the journalist believes, these are employees of the transport riot police of Chechnya, where Khalidov served.

“That’s why the attackers used every means to get access to our phones and laptops,” the journalist said.

According to Novaya Gazeta, in September of last year, 19-year-old Khalidov was sent to the war with Ukraine, but repeatedly asked to resign from the service.

In March, Khalidov appealed to the administrators of the opposition telegram channel 1ADAT, brothers Ibrahim and Abubakar Yangulbayev, with a request to help him leave Russia. In exchange, he allegedly offered all information about the activities of the Center for Countering Extremism (“Center E”).

After receiving the information, the activists cut off communication with Khalidov, considering that they should not help a person who may be involved in crimes against Chechens and peaceful citizens of Ukraine.

At the same time, in early April, 1ADAT published an investigation based, most likely, on Khalidov’s story and data. Presumably, the police were able to identify Khalidov as the source of information transmission on the Internet based on the disclosed data.

• To establish the whereabouts of Khalidov, the lawyer Alexander Nemov turned to the leadership of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB in the Omsk region and the director of the Russian Guard Viktor Zolotov, to the prosecutor’s office of Chechnya and other authorities.
• The story of Yasin Khalidov has sparked a wide discussion among human rights defenders working in the North Caucasus. 1ADAT itself is convinced that the publication of the announcement did not affect the detention of Khalidov, since he was wanted even before that, and the human rights defenders, to whom the activists turned, did not take any measures to evacuate him from the country for two months.
• The attack on journalist Elena Milashyna and lawyer Alexander Nemov happened on the morning of Tuesday, July 4, when they arrived in Grozny on a business trip. The taxi in which Milashyna and Nemov were traveling from the airport to the city center was stopped by unknown persons. They forcibly put the journalist and the lawyer in one of their cars, drove them to a nearby ravine, where they began to severely beat her. Nemova was stabbed in the leg, and Milashina was specially beaten on the fingers, the thunderbolt would amputate them.
• Elena Milashyna and Alexander Nemov flew to Chechnya for the sentencing of Zarema Musaeva, the mother of the Yangulbaev brothers and the wife of judge Sayda Yangulbaev. All of them are located outside of Russia.

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