Russia

An arm of the Russian prosecutor-general has decided to open a criminal probe into the mysterious July 2003 death of Yuri Shchekochikhin, deputy editor of the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “We welcome this important if overdue step on behalf of Russian prosecutors to uncover the truth about the death of our colleague Yuri Shchekochikhin,” Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Executive

The global leadership of the International Federation of Journalists today protested over this week’s closure by the Russian fire authorities of the House of Journalists, a popular meeting place for reporters in central Moscow. The IFJ says the action is evidence of fresh intimidation of media and independent journalism by the Government of President Vladimir Putin in advance of Parliamentary...

Press freedom and human rights organisations have renewed calls for a thorough investigation into the murder of crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and an end to impunity. October 7 marked the first anniversary of the brutal murder of Politkovskaya, a renowned Kremlin critic who exposed human rights abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya. Politkovskaya, who worked with the Novaya Gazeta

A bewspaper in the southern Russian city of Saratov is facing closure following the campaign launched against it by the United Russia party for “insulting” President Vladimir Putin in a cartoon on its front page. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the regional court of Saratov to act judiciously and avoid being manipulated when it rules on October 2 on a bid by the pro-Putin United

Over one thousand members of the Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ) gathered in Sochi on the Black Sea with the support of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) for a four-day festival of journalism, the biggest of its kind. IFJ President Jim Boumelha, addressing the official opening ceremony, paid tribute to the RUJ’s tradition of internationalism and thanked the journalists for the...

A court in Russia’s west-central republic of Tatarstan has convicted five members of a criminal gang in the 2000 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Igor Domnikov, the newspaper reported Thursday. The convictions are the first involving a journalist murdered for his or her work since 2000, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). During that time, CPJ found, 14 journalists have been...

Ten suspects have been arrested in the October 2006 assassination in Moscow of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya. Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika told reporters Monday that the detained suspects include current and former police and Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, along with members of a criminal gang that “specialises in contract killings” and is led by a Chechen crime...

Russian journalist Larisa Arap has been released from a psychiatric clinic near the northern city of Murmansk where she had been held against her will for 46 days. The 48-year Arap, an active member of the opposition United Civic Front, was forcefully hospitalised in what she says was retribution for an article she had written denouncing abuse against patients at another local psychiatric clinic...

The Russian government has asked the Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ), which represents more than 100,000 journalists, to vacate its offices in central Moscow. RUJ Secretary-General Igor Yakovenko said the union received a letter from the Federal Property Management Agency on May 16 saying it would have to hand over its premises to the state-owned Russia Today TV station within a month. RUJ is...

Slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya's diaries, published in English this week, paint a damning picture of a Russia where democracy is stifled, fascism is on the rise and ethnic minorities are brutally repressed. For her, one man is to blame -- President Vladimir Putin. Her hard-hitting account of Russian news and politics over two years, including the parliamentary elections in 2003 and the Beslan...