‘When I have to go to Chechnya, I’ll go’

Veteran reporter Elena Milashina talks about being assaulted in Grozny and who was behind the attack

Journalist Elena Milashina, a veteran staff reporter with Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, has given an extended interview to the independent journalist Katerina Gordeyeva, talking about the Beslan hostage crisis, Ramzan Kadyrov’s rise to power in Chechnya, the Kursk submarine catastrophe, and other subjects she covered over the years. She also shared new details of the assault that she and the human rights lawyer Alexander Nemov came under in Chechnya, while traveling to Grozny on July 4, 2023, for the final court hearing on the case of Zarema Musayeva. In this interview extract, Milashina talks about the attack, its plausible motives, and the authorities’ tacit refusal to guarantee her security in the future.

A victim must display what has been done to them, to make the aggressor feel awkward and afraid. I don’t flinch from sharing photos of myself after the beating: I did this deliberately. Two months down the road, my head and my vision are fine, and my hands are fine too. I get annoyed when people tell me that the “new haircut” suits me, because I wouldn’t have shaved my own head — this was an act of violence. The bruises and swelling are gone, but my hair keeps reminding me of what happened, every single day.

The attackers could have been identified in just a few hours. There were security cameras at the site of our beating, as well as at the airport, and the detectives have that footage. They’re now trying to use it to identify the people’s faces, but they could’ve done something much simpler: they could have tracked our smartphones, which were stolen by the attackers, to figure out whose phones were active near them the whole time while en route. The detectives haven’t done this.

Novaya Gazeta’s safety guidelines forbid being picked up by a personal driver at the airport in Chechnya, because this would put him at risk. That’s why we used Yandex Taxi. I didn’t make a secret of going to Chechnya that time. I simply went ahead and bought a ticket to Grozny. I had no intention of taking any secret detours. Usually, I don’t go there alone. I normally have a bodyguard, who also comes from outside the region. I’ve long since stopped counting on help from the locals — they will help, but later on, they’ll have problems themselves.

We didn’t expect our going to the final hearing on Zarema Musayeva’s case to trigger violence. What I hadn’t factored in — and this can be considered my failing — was the situation with Yasin Khalidov.

Who is Yasin Khalidov?

Yasin Khalidov, now 19, worked in the Chechen police since he was 17, later joining the National Guard and working as an operative of the federal anti-extremism agency Center E. In September 2022, he was sent to the combat zone in Ukraine, where he spent four months. While in Ukraine and later in Chechnya, Khalidov tried to resign from the National Guard, but his requests were denied. If he kept trying to quit, he was threatened, he would be prosecuted for terrorism.

In late January, Khalidov escaped from custody and left Chechnya. He appealed for help to the Chechen bloggers Ibragim and Baisangur Yangulbayev. According to Elena Milashina, in exchange for their assistance the Yangulbayev brothers required Khalidov to tell them everything he knew about the Chechen police. He agreed, but asked them not to publish the information he shared until he was outside of Russia. The bloggers nevertheless announced the forthcoming exposé before he managed to escape. Among other things, Khalidov talked about recruiting young Chechens to take part in assaults on Kadyrov’s men, only to be arrested or killed afterwards.

Khalidov was eventually arrested when trying to cross the border with Kazakhstan. After he was handed over to the law enforcement in Omsk, he disappeared. His lawyers, one of whom was Alexander Nemov, thought he’d been handed over to Chechen law enforcement. Their queries about their client’s location got no answer.

Zarema Musayeva is the middle-aged mother of the Yangulbayev brothers. In 2022, she was forcibly brought to Chechnya by the republic’s law enforcement. She was then put on trial on charges of using violence against a state official and sentenced to 5.5 years in a penal colony.

I had written a short article about Khalidov’s disappearance, but he didn’t appeal to me personally. What I hadn’t taken into account was what kind of information he’d dealt with — and that information was utterly explosive. For instance, he said that Chechnya needed all the terrorist attacks of 2015 to justify the size of the police force in the republic. Alexander Nemov was one of Khalidov’s lawyers. And there we were, innocently flying to Chechnya on July 4 without any inkling of the danger.

I thought we’d been attacked because Kadyrov really dislikes me. I’m not dismissing that factor, but all of my sources have told me that the attack was directly related to Khalidov. The people who assaulted us were the same people who picked up Khalidov in Omsk. The moment the detectives want to find out their names, they can do so easily.

I’m not going to Chechnya for Zarema Musayeva’s appeal hearing. We’ve discussed this idea, but word about it got out too early on, when the Committee Against Torture published this information without my permission. The risks are significant though. We tried to appeal to the Chechen ombudsman Mansur Soltayev, who invited me to call him about similar issues. So I called him. When he answered, I recognized his voice, but he said that it was Soltayev’s assistant speaking, and that Soltayev himself wasn’t available.

After that, I appealed to [the Human Rights Commissioner] Tatyana Moskalkova, who got in touch with Soltayev and then told me he’d call me back. But he didn’t, and his “assistant” kept picking up the phone when we called. Around that time, Novaya Gazeta’s editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, was designated a foreign agent. Soltayev gave a programmatic speech about all foreign agents being traitors, and then there was radio silence from Moskalkova, too.

I understand what these signals mean. They mean a total denial of security — and mind you, a whole bunch of people were supposed to come with me to Chechnya. I don’t play such games. I’m too smart for that. But when I have to go to Chechnya, I’ll go.