They don't stop

Oleg Kashin has not yet recovered from the brutal beating on the night of November 6, and people with baseball bats (or other objects), whom he wrote about as new characters in the modern Russian political scene, continue to attack journalists. This time the victim of the attack was Anatoly Adamchuk, a correspondent for the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper. As Ekho Moskvy reports, Adamchuk’s colleagues associate the attack with actions in defense of the local forest. A few days ago, Adamchuk reported to federal agencies about police detentions of children participating in actions in defense of the Zhukovsky forest. Indeed, forest protection has been abolished, but those who encroach on forests are being protected with all their might.

Adamchuk was attacked by two unknown men, hit from behind on the back of the head and several more times when he fell. According to his colleague Sergei Grammatin, Adamchuk has a traumatic brain injury and a mild concussion. Fortunately, there was no need to go to the hospital, and he comes to his senses at home.

Later, however, Adamchuk was hospitalized in the trauma department of the city hospital, as his health condition worsened. Doctors say he will spend at least 10 days in the hospital. He was found to have a concussion and a hematoma on his face. The case of attack on him was opened under the article “robbery” - apparently, the basis for this was that after the beating, Adamchuk did not find flash cards with editorial materials on him. The investigation does not rule out that the attack was not related to his professional activities. We must assume that the attackers simply decided to profit from someone’s flash drive. The police insist that Adamchuk was drunk.

As for Kashin, he is in the intensive care unit of hospital No. 36 in medicated sleep. He was operated on for broken jaws and a broken leg. According to one version, which is discussed by journalists and bloggers, the Khimki authorities are behind the attack on him, since he wrote about the situation around the Khimki forest and about anti-fascists who attacked the local administration building. Human rights activists appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev with a request to remove the mayor of Khimki, Vladimir Strelchenko, from office during the investigation. Strelchenko is suspected of involvement in the attack on Khimki journalist Mikhail Beketov, who openly criticized the city authorities, including in connection with plans to build a highway through the Khimki forest. In the fall of 2008, he was severely beaten; as a result, his leg and several fingers on his hand were amputated; he can hardly speak. And about a day before the attack on Kashin in Khimki, Right Cause party activist Konstantin Fetisov, who participated in actions in defense of the forest, was beaten. He is still in the hospital in a coma.