Prominent Russian journalist injured in attack in Chechnya

A Russian investigative journalist known for her work on human rights was severely beaten and seriously injured in an attack in Chechnya on Tuesday morning, along with a lawyer. according to a statement from her newspaper.

Elena Milashina, a journalist at Novaya Gazeta who uncovered the torture and murder of gay men in Chechnya, was in Grozny to cover the trial of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of exiled opposition activists, the paper said. Ms. Milashina and the lawyer, Alexander Nemov, representing Ms. Musayeva, were approached by masked men who beat them with batons, took their phones and demanded that they unlock the phones, according to Novaya Gazeta. Equipment and documents were also destroyed.

Ms. Milashina suffered a brain injury, her fingers were broken and she lost consciousness repeatedly, the statement said. According to the newspaper, Mr. Nemov was stabbed.

A photo posted by the newspaper showed the journalist sitting on a hospital stretcher with her hands bandaged up to her wrists and most of her hair shaved off. Noyava Gazeta said it published the photo with her permission.

The Reporters Without Borders group, which advocates for press freedom and monitors violence against journalists, said on Tuesday that it was “appalled by the savage attack” on Ms. Milashina. Six journalists from Novaya Gazeta, an independent news outlet, have been killed in their three decades of existence. The editor of the publication, Dmitri A. Muratov, received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. The newspaper suspended publication in Russia after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine due to wartime censorship laws.

In early 2022, Ms. Musayeva was taken from her apartment building in central Russia in her slippers and pushed into a black SUV and taken to Chechnya. Her abduction was widely regarded as part of a hunt for two of her sons, Abubakar and Ibragim Yangulbayev, prominent government critics who had enraged the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Mr. Kadyrov had previously called Ms. Milashina a “terrorist accomplice” for her support of the Yangulbayev family.