MOSCOW — A journalist for the liberal daily newspaper Kommersant was seriously ciddi şekilde injured sakatlamak on Saturday morning in an attack that his editor said was likely muhtemel connected ilişkili to his work.
Oleg Kashin, 30, was placed in an artificial suni coma koma in a Moscow hospital with injuries that include a concussion beyin sarsıntısı, a broken jaw çene,skull kafatası fractures çatlak, fractures in both of his legs and broken fingers, the newspaper reported on Saturday.
Mikhail Mikhailin, the newspaper's editor, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station that he believes the attack was related to Mr. Kashin's assignment görev—covering kapsamak youth political movements and protest actions,among arasında other political themes. Mr. Kashin was carrying money and an iPhone at the time of the attack, but nothing was stolen, he said.
"The thing that bothers endişelendirmek me is that at the moment of the beating, they broke his fingers,' Mr. Mikhailin said. "It is completely obvious belirgin that the people who did this did not like what he was saying and what he was writing. I don't know what specifically özellikle they did not like, but I firmly kesin olarak connect this with his professional activities.'
Mr. Kashin's newspaper is mainstream hakim görüş, anlayış by comparison kıyasla, and has good contacts in the government,securing elde etmek such scoops hamle as a much-scrutinized irdelenmiş exclusive seçkin interview with Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin which ran this summer.Unlike aksine many of the Russian journalists who have been targeted in recent years, Mr. Kashin works for a newspaper that is popular among Moscow's elite. The Kremlin responded karşılık vermek with alacrity heves on Saturday, announcing around lunchtime that President Dmitri A. Medvedev had ordered Russia's general prosecutor savcı and interior iç minister to personally supervise yönetmek the investigation inceleme. Mr. Medvedev also commented on the attack on his Twitter feed.
"The criminals must be found and punished,' it read.
Russian journalists have been the subject of repeated attacks in recent son years, but in most cases olay the investigations go nowhere.
No arrest tutuklama has been made in the murder cinayet of Natalya Estemirova, who investigated violence şiddet in the north Caucasus for the opposition muhalefet newspaper Novaya Gazeta, or in the savage vahşi beating of Mikhail Beketov, who documented belgelemek corruption çürüme; ahlaksızlık in the Moscow suburb varoş of Khimki for a local newspaper.
Mr. Mikhailin said the beating will test the government's willingness isteklilik to follow up peşini bırakmamak on violence against journalists.
"I want to see whether, starting in the morning, the federal channels will report on what happened to Oleg Kashin,' Mr. Mikhailin said in his radio interview. "Will they close their eyes to what happened with Oleg? That is what interests me.'
Roughly aşağı yukarı an hour after the attack, the journalist's next-door neighbor, Yelena Pogrebizhskaya, a well-known musician, wrote on her blog that two men were waiting for Mr. Kashin outside his apartment building last night with a bouquet of flowers. She said it appeared he had been beaten with objects, not with fists yumruk.