Russia

Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal case into the mysterious death in July 2003 of an investigative journalist and liberal lawmaker, news agency RIA Novosti has reported quoting an investigation committee spokesman on Friday. Yury Shchekochikhin, who reported on high-profile corruption cases, died after a brief and puzzling illness almost five years ago, at the age of 53. A post mortem...

Russian journalist Yelena Tregubova, who wrote a book criticizing President Vladimir Putin for abusing freedom of speech, said she's been granted political asylum in the UK, according to Bloomberg News. The former Kremlin correspondent for Russia's Kommersant newspaper, who asked for asylum in London last year, said she's "very pleased'' with the decision in comments broadcast on Ekho Moskvy radio...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned Thursday’s attack on Arseny Makhlov, founder of the independent weekly Dvornik, in the western city of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region of Russia. An unidentified assailant stabbed Makhlov twice in the back at around 7:00 pm as he was leaving a local restaurant, the journalist told New York-based CPJ. The attacker fled the scene immediately...

Tajik police have detained two men suspected of murdering a Russian television reporter who was found stabbed in a Moscow apartment with a belt around his neck, news agencies have reported. The detained men are Tajik nationals, Interior Ministry spokesman Khaidar Makhmadiev said, according to the Associated Press (AP) . He said he could not identify them by name. Interfax and ITAR-Tass news...

Authorities in in the Russian republic of Ingushetia want to see the back of a private television channel that has shown critical reports from the region. In an open letter to the Russian parliament, the prosecutor-general, the FSB security service and the interior ministry, delegates of the region’s Popular Assembly demanded that Moscow-based REN-TV stop broadcasting in the Republic, according to...

Two journalists who covered the volatile North Caucasus have been murdered in Russia in the last 24 hours, the first such killings in nearly a year. The motives are still unclear. Firefighters found the body of Ilyas Shurpayev, a correspondent for Russian state television’s Channel One, in his Moscow apartment early Friday morning. He had been strangled and stabbed. The perpetrators had apparently...

Press freedom violations marred Russia’s presidential election on March 2, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The incidents that occurred during the election are indicative of the nervousness that the authorities feel towards independent journalists,” Paris-based RSF said in a statement. In South Sakhalin, reporter Pavel Abakumov of the weekly Yuzhno Sakhalinsk Tvoya Gazeta was...

Outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev are benefitting from partisan broadcast media coverage in their favour, presidential election monitoring by the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) has shown. CJES Thursday released results of its monitoring of media coverage of candidates for the March 2 presidential election as well as of the

Security guards at Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow continued to hold Natalya Morar and her husband Ilya Barabanov, both reporters with the independent newsweekly the New Times, for a second consecutive day, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Authorities have denied Morar access to her lawyer while pressuring her to buy a return ticket to her native...

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the way news media are being harassed to prevent them reporting the activities of the opposition parties taking part in this weekend’s parliamentary elections and by the way the public TV stations have systematically promoted Vladimir Putin’s candidacy. “Public opinion is being crudely manipulated,” the press freedom organisation said. “The international...