Elena Milashina's explanatory note after an attack in Grozny

A new tradition has appeared in Chechnya: to attack those who protect the Chechens from the Kadyrovites.

On Thursday, February 6, late at night and lawyer Marina Dubrovin was attacked by a group of Chechen “Tithees”. This is not the first action of the aggression with which human rights activists, journalists and lawyers are faced with Chechnya. In 2014 and 2015, there were attacks both on employees of human rights organizations of the “Committee against torture” and “Memorial”, and their offices in Grozny and Gudermes. In 2016, on the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia, they attacked a bus with human rights activists and journalists, and a few days later in the center of Grozny they evicted from the best hotel in the city, thrown into eggs, flour and doused Igor Kalyapin, a member of the Presidential Council under the President of the Russian Federation.

The targets of Kadyrov’s anger were such world -famous human rights activists as Svetlana Gannushkin and Oleg Orlov, against the head of the Chechen branch of the Memorial Oyub Titiev in January 2018, a criminal case was fabricated.

It is difficult for me to count how many times I personally received public threats from Ramzan Akhmatovich. The wildest of them arrived in April 2017, after our publications on the persecution of gays in Chechnya. In the main mosque, Chechnya gathered 20,000 people. The assistant for the religious issues of Kadyrov Shahidov and the Mufti of Chechnya Mezhidov performed and publicly announced the unlimited “sacred jihad” to all the employees of “New” - from the workers of our dining room to beautiful ladies from the accounting department. True, during the interrogation of the investigator Mezhidov and Shahids renounced their own curses, and the plot with the mosque packed by the people was removed from the Grozny ChGTRK website.

In general, all this disgrace has long been a real tradition. And it’s bitter to talk about this, but this new tradition is much more accurate than the customs of proud highlanders corresponds to the state of modern Chechen society. Over and over again, society silently swallows reality that humiliates the Chechens themselves: when Chechen guys are beaten and thrown by men and women, young and not very, they beat and throw eggs with eggs. And now - and Chechen girls.

How it was

On February 6, 2020, I flew to Grozny to cover three trials in the factory district court. I stopped at the Contament Hotel, in which I stopped many times. This is a comfortable and inexpensive hotel in which there are always a lot of visitors. Also in the hotel there is a fitness club, quite popular among local security forces. There are always a lot of Chechen policemen here.

On 19.07, on the day of arrival, I made a mistake - posted a photo of a cherry box on Facebook, which is sold in a supermarket, on the first floor of the hotel building.

I really love Cheremsh, and I always feel sorry for that they are not prepared in a single cafe of Grozny-because of the smell. In general, I have long if I report on social networks about my regular trips to Chechnya, then only a post -fact. Because it is not inclined to exaggerate the operational talents of local law enforcement agencies: they can calculate my movements only with my own help. And yesterday I, apparently, helped them greatly in this: comments under the photograph of Cheremshi made an obvious fact and the place of my location in Grozny.

It seems to me that this attack was clearly prepared in a hurry. And that's why.

About 23 hours, having dinner in a cafe in the building opposite, we went into the hotel lobby. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a large number of people, men and women, more than 15 people. Several young girls went to us. One of them was in a brilliant-silver-silver, tight-fitting chest of jacket and in a black scarf on his head. They were all in black scarves, but these shawls looked somehow theatrical. As a scenery for a play. This brilliant girl's scarf was straying a slap and obviously did not go to her rather even evening outfit. She asked me why I am protecting the "Wahhabists who killed our husbands." This question had already reminded the already forgotten past, when crowds of Chechen state employees with huge posters were saturated on human rights activists: “Kalyapin is a friend of the terrorists”, “Gannushkina - mother of anarchy”, and so on.

But the problem is that it has become completely indecent and impossible to speculate on the topic of the underground in recent years. Just because this underground is already ten years old in principle. In Chechnya, terrorist activity is reduced to zero, which the Chechen authorities themselves tirelessly talk about when they call tourists from all over the world to the republic. But as soon as Russian and foreign human rights activists come instead of tourists, journalists, lawyers and diplomats, ghosts of terrorists immediately begin to walk in Chechnya.

I wanted to explain the brilliant girl that she was indecently young in order to pass herself up for the widow of a policeman who died in battles with real militants.

But I had no chance of negotiations. They were simply not supposed in the script of this night show. The girl deliciously hit me in the face,

The crowd, as a signal, amicably tumbled down with Marina to a beautiful marble and, as it turned out, not a very clean floor. They beat once in a woman’s-hysterical, dramatic, using glamorous gel nails as the main tool. Most of all in such female fights gets hair. Marina and I then combed his hair shreds all night, like that Tyumen camel Kesha, who fell into a molting at the time.

At first, apparently from surprise, Marina and I experienced the storm in silence. And only when I realized that the two girls clung tightly into my phone (and my iPhone is very dear to me!), I yelled with a good obscenity: “Fire!” Following me screamed "Help!" And Marina. This well -established method worked.

The young bearded man, who led the women's brigade and shot the beating on the video, gave the command, and the “Vdov girls” took off to the street one after another. I saw how one of them stopped looking at herself in the mirror and straightened the falling skirt and disheveled hair. This moment sincerely delighted me.

Islam

And now, with regard to who exactly we protect in Chechnya and why we were attacked. I must say, in recent years in Chechnya whom I just did not defend. Both Chechen gays and Chechen "drug addicts" - more precisely, people who were thrown by drugs. Peasants, state employees, women and men, ordinary mortals and mayors of Chechen cities, prosecutors, police officers, investigators and many times - judges of the Supreme Court of Chechnya (my favorite category of Chechen victims).

An hour before the attack, for example, I found out that 20 schoolchildren were detained in Gudermes the other day.

And the employees threatened the relatives that they would hold the boys in the Chechen basements until their age. The reason is the replication in social networks of the next critical sabe about the Chechen government.

On November 1, last year, in his house in Grozny, he was detained, placed in the basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Grozny and another young Chechen - Islam Nukhanov was overwhelmed to half death. The reason - a day earlier, he posted in YouTube a video of elite mansions, in which the Chechen elite lives and for a day in life, who did not work lovers, whom they give out for the second, third, etc. wives.

At the end of November, Marina Dubrovina entered into defense of Islam Nukhanov, who, under torture, was knocked out by the absurd “confession” in their plot in storage of weapons (the second most popular article in Chechnya after drug storage). It was in connection with this case that Dubrovin, already annoying the local authorities with his active work, came under the magnifying glass, dangerous attention. They began to look for sources of financing her work, began to interrogate, and then pursue her Chechen colleagues. Thus, the lawyer Abubakar Vadaev, who was Dubrovina’s assistance in the case of Nukhanov, was called by the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya Alkhanov in early January. And now they are trying to start a criminal case against a lawyer.

This attack, of course, is connected with Islam Nukhanov, and I understand what the customers of this matter are so afraid of.

The Chechen government is afraid of the terrorists,

And the purulent topics that have long been related in society. This is corruption, it is a catastrophic social inequality, it is a mess of Chechen security forces. And it so happened that it is young people who raise these topics. That is why most of the young people in Chechnya, who, because of the age of never fought on the side of Ichkeria or on the side of Russia, replenish today the basements of secret Chechen prisons. And a smaller part - cowardly attacks those who beat off and pull out their peers from Chechen dungeons.