Evening Medusa

January 31st. Meduza remembers Orkhan Dzhemal, Kirill Radchenko and Alexander Rastorguev

Six months ago, on July 31, 2018, three Russians were killed in the Central African Republic: journalist Orkhan Dzhemal, cameraman Kirill Radchenko and director Alexander Rastorguev, who had come to shoot a documentary about Wagner PMC mercenaries in that country. The murder is still unsolved; neither in Russia nor in the CAR have anyone been charged.

"Don't be afraid, dying is not so scary . " Ilya Zhegulev talks about Orkhan Dzhemal

... Once in the thick of it, Jemal began to photograph what was happening - and then he felt that his leg had broken, and he saw a pool of blood spreading under it (this is how he later told this story). Deciding that he was dying, he began to read the dying shahada - at that moment, a machine gunner, whom he photographed, jumped up to the journalist, tore off the keffiyeh from his head and put a tourniquet on Jemal's leg.

"He didn't want to fit in" . Polina Eremenko - about Kirill Radchenko

... In other letters, Kirill compared the war with a dark doorway and spoiled food, told how he dined when he returned from the front line, how two hundred meters from the front of the family they made barbecue and smoked a hookah, how children rushed after him and his quadrocopter shouting “Taera!” ("airplane"). “He described life that took place against the backdrop of the war, not military events,” explains one of Radchenko’s friends. “He looked deeper — how people live the feeling of war.”

"My heroes are my executioners . " Elena Vanina - about Alexander Rastorguev

“Sasha really wanted to get to Syria,” says cameraman Mikhail Khursevich, a close friend of Rastorguev. - He thought that where there is war - there is life, there is some kind of flow of time. It's a different environment." “I told him: Sasha, what are you going to shoot there? Kirillov adds. - And he was like: “A movie about love. Imagine: he is from IS, she is from the camp.”

Grisha Levchenko, Dima Tomilov