FEBRUARY 8, 2005
Posted: February 10, 2005

Kommersant
HARASSED

Federal authorities in Moscow issued an official warning to the independent Moscow daily Kommersant for publishing a February 7 interview with Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, according to local and international press reports.

The Federal Service for Oversight of Compliance with Media Laws issued the warning under the Media Law and the Law Against Extremist Activities, which bans the distribution of information that supports "extremist activities," according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

By law, authorities can shutter media outlets that receive three warnings in a year. This is Kommersant's first warning in 2005. The newspaper has yet to receive official notice of the warning, but an unidentified official at the regulatory agency said it would be sent later this week, the Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy reported.

Georgii Ivanov, head of the legal department at the Kommersant Publishing House, said the publisher was planning to challenge the validity of the warning in court, Ekho Moskvy reported. Ivanov said the newspaper succeeded in having a court strike down an April 2000 warning issued after Kommersant published a similar interview with Maskhadov.

In the recent interview, Maskhadaov called on President Vladimir Putin to open peace talks with the rebels in response to their unilateral cease-fire, something Putin has refused to do. Recent polls show that about half of Russians support some form of official contact between the government and the rebels, Agence France-Presse reported.

Russian law enforcement officials placed a $10 million bounty on Maskhadov and a second rebel leader, Shamil Basayev, after a string of deadly attacks against Russian forces and civilians.

Under Putin, the Kremlin has intensified its efforts to block news coverage of rebel views. The Foreign Ministry pressured several neighboring countries to shut down the pro-rebel news Web site Kavkazcenter in 2004, and it strongly criticized British authorities last week for allowing Channel 4 independent television to broadcast an interview with Basayev, according to press reports.

APRIL 23, 2005
Posted: May 3, 2005

Irina Petrushova, Respublika Delovoye Obozreniye
HARASSED, IMPRISONED

Police in the Russian city of Volokolamsk detained Petrushova, editor of the Kazakh opposition weekly Respublika Delovoye Obozreniye, for two days at the request of Kazakh authorities, the journalist told CPJ.

Petrushova, a 2002 winner of CPJ's International Press Freedom Award, said Kazakh authorities had sought to extradite her on alleged tax violations, but the prosecutor- general's office in Moscow determined she was being held improperly. Petrushova was released on April 25 after the prosecutor ruled that the Kazakh warrant had expired, she said in a telephone interview.

Petrushova fled Kazakhstan in 2002 after enduring threats and harassment. A Russian citizen, she relocated to her home country and continues to edit the Kazakh weekly even as Kazakh authorities continue to pursue her. Petrushova was detained by police in St. Petersburg on similar tax charges in March 2004, but released after Russian police said they did not want to get involved in Kazakhstan's political matters.

Russian authorities appeared to use a ruse to pick up Petrushova on April 23. Authorities told her Friday that her passport renewal was ready at the Interior Ministry's Passport and Visa Service in Volokolamsk. But when Petrushova arrived at the passport office on Saturday, she said, four police officers took her to the Interior Ministry's temporary detention unit, where she was searched and held for the next two days. Police denied Petrushova's lawyer, Vladimir Bityutskih, access to his client until he threatened to publicize the detention, according to Petrushova and Russian press reports.

Petrushova said the detention left her and her relatives fearful. "My family and I were afraid that I might be abducted and taken some place," Petrushova told CPJ.

Petrushova has faced a pattern of harassment from Kazakh authorities. She was forced to leave Kazakhstan in fall 2002 after numerous incidents of harassment and intimidation in retaliation for her reporting on high-level corruption. Her newspaper had to change its name after being subjected to politically motivated lawsuits. And between 2000 and 2002, Delovoye Obozreniye Respublika (now Respublika Delovoye Obozreniye), was forced to change its printer numerous times after government officials pressured printers into refusing services to the weekly.

In March 2002, Petrushova received a funeral wreath from an anonymous "fan;" two months later, Respublika's staff in Almaty found a decapitated dog hanging from an office window with a threatening note attached. (The dog's head was later found at Petrushova's door with a similar note.) Three days after that incident, the newspaper's offices were firebombed. Fearing for her safety, Petrushova finally left Kazakhstan for Russia.


MAY 9, 2005
Posted: May 17, 2005

Ivo Kirsblats, LTV
Maris Jurgensons, LTV
LEGAL ACTION, CENSORED

The Latvian television crew members were detained by local police and federal agents in Pytalovo, a district on the Latvia-Russia border.

Reporter Kirsblats, cameraman Jurgensons, and driver Eriks Pakalns of the Riga-based Latvian public television LTV were detained for three hours on the morning of May 9 at the Pytalovo police station. Police forced them to destroy video footage and to leave the country by 6 p.m. that day, Kirsblats told CPJ in a telephone interview yesterday.

The crew arrived in Russia on the evening of May 8 to cover the Victory Day celebration in Pytalovo the next day, and do a feature about the way people live on the border, Kirsblats told CPJ.

The crew had obtained proper press accreditation from Russia's Foreign Ministry on May 7 and obtained one-month Russian visas, according to Kirsblats and LTV Editor-in-Chief Inta Lase. They had planned to complete their assignment in three days.

Local police detained the crew after it started shooting footage on the morning of May 9. Several police officers, a person who identified himself as a Federal Security Services (FSB) agent, and at least one immigration officer questioned the crew members, Kirsblats told CPJ. Police accused the journalists of filming forbidden sites, and the immigration officer told them "he had never seen such press passes as theirs," Kirsblats told CPJ.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Latvian crew was filming without authorization a railway station that serves as an international transit point, Agence France-Presse reported.

"The journalists tried to film the railway station as background footage for their story," Lase told CPJ in a telephone interview today. "The railway is old and does not work anymore. It used to connect Latvia with Russia, and the crew wanted to use it as a symbol of the lost connection between the two countries. If that was a forbidden site, nowhere was it noted so."

Vandals broke the windshield of the LTV crew's car, which was parked next to its hotel, while the journalists were being detained.

The crew members tried to take additional footage of people in the Pytalovo streets before leaving Russia, but police ordered them to stop taping and erase the footage.


MAY 21, 2005
Posted: July 15, 2005

Pavel Makeev, Puls
KILLED—UNCONFIRMED

The body of the 21-year-old cameraman was found alongside a road on the outskirts of the Rostov Region town shortly after he arrived to film illegal drag-race competitions. Authorities classified the death as a traffic accident, but colleagues believed he was killed purposely to thwart his report, according to local press reports and CPJ interviews. CPJ is investigating the death.

Makeev's body, covered with multiple bruises and fractures, was found in a roadside ditch at around 1 a.m. The road connecting Azov with the town of Bataysk is the site of drag-race competitions that are organized by local young people and draw large crowds and illegal betting. Residents say these races have been going on for three years, but police have not halted the practice, according to local press reports.

The night Makeev was killed, he went to film a drag race in preparation for a report for Puls, a colleague told CPJ. The colleague, Sergei Bondarenko, said he gave Makeev a ride to the racing site at 11:30 p.m. on May 20. Bondarenko said he left an hour later. "Pavel said he wanted to shoot some more. He assured me that he could get a taxi or ask somebody for a ride to come back home," Bondarenko told CPJ.

Police discovered a pool of blood on the road about 15 meters (50 feet) away from Makeev's body, according to local reports and CPJ interviews. No brake marks were found and police found a bloody trail on the road indicating that a body might have been dragged, news reports said. Makeev's video camera—including any footage he may have taken—and mobile phone were missing. Police said they discovered the car that allegedly hit Makeev, but no arrests have been reported.

The investigation has been transferred to the Rostov Regional Prosecutor's Office. "Investigators do not consider Makeev's professional activity to be a possible motive for the crime," Elena Velikova, press secretary for the prosecutor, told CPJ in a telephone interview. She did not describe other motives that prosecutors are considering.

But at least two journalists told CPJ that they consider his death to be connected to his reporting; they noted that reporters who have tried to cover drag racing are often threatened.

Aleksei Sklyarov, Puls general director, told CPJ that racers would not want to see Makeev report on an illegal event. Grigory Bochkaryov, Rostov expert for the Moscow-based press freedom organization Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, told CPJ that road police often accept bribes in exchange for allowing the drag races. In a report following Makeev's death, Puls said the drag races typically attract crowds of spectators, and the station questioned what had happened to witnesses.

MAY 29, 2005
Posted: June 3, 2005

Mariusz Pilis, TVP
Marcin Mamon, TVP
Tomasz Glowacki, TVP
HARASSED

Police and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia detained three journalists from the Polish state television station TVP, according to The Associated Press.

Mariusz Pilis, Marcin Mamon, and Tomasz Glowacki were detained on Sunday around 8:30 p.m., at their hotel in Nazran, Ingushetia's biggest city. Several police officers took them to a local police station and held them for 14 hours, where over a dozen police officers and at least one FSB agent interrogated them in separate rooms, Pilis told CPJ in a telephone interview today.

Pilis, who was producing a documentary film for TVP on life in the war-torn republic of Chechnya, told CPJ that he and his crew were planning to travel to the Chechen capital of Grozny on Monday to interview Chechen officials. Both he and his crew had Russian visas and had received the necessary press accreditation from the Foreign Ministry in order to work on the documentary.

Police, however, said the journalists' visas and accreditation cards were no longer valid and confiscated 18 videotapes of footage the crew had previously filmed in Chechnya, Pilis said. Police also took the crew's papers, television equipment, reporter's notes, telephone contacts, and film.

Armed FSB agents escorted the crew back to their hotel in Nazran on Monday night but prevented them from leaving it for a few more hours, the AP said. The agents did not return the crew's videotapes and film. Before leaving, "they [FSB agents] told us to leave Ingushetia immediately because if we stayed one more night, we would face big problems," Pilis told CPJ.

The crew departed immediately for Vladikavkaz, the regional capital of the republic of North Ossetia, which borders Ingushetia. The Polish Consul-General Tomasz Klimansky was scheduled to fly there from Moscow on June 2 in order to meet with the journalists, Pilis told CPJ.


JUNE 6, 2005
Posted: June 21, 2005

Nikolai Goshko, Radio Vesna and Odintsovskaya Nedelya
LEGAL ACTION, IMPRISONED

An arbitration court in the central Russian city of Smolensk convicted independent journalist Nikolai Goshko on charges of criminal defamation and sentenced him to five years in a prison colony for defaming three Smolensk officials in a July 2000 broadcast on the independent station, Radio Vesna.

On June 6, Judge Irina Malinovskaya surprised both the defense and the prosecution with the harsh verdict against Goshko, deputy editor-in-chief of the Odintsovo-based weekly newspaper Odintsovskaya Nedelya and former Radio Vesna correspondent, according to local press reports.

On July 27, 2000, Goshko made statements on Radio Vesna that accused top Smolensk officials of masterminding the murder of Sergey Novikov, Radio Vesna's owner and director, the day before. Following the broadcast, the officials filed a criminal defamation complaint against Goshko at the Lenin Regional Court in Smolensk, demanding a one-year suspended prison sentence for the journalist. The case was initially handled by the Lenin Regional Court, but was later moved to the arbitration court in Smolensk, local reports said.

"Nobody expected an actual prison sentence for Goshko, let alone a five-year one," Aleksandr Asadchy, editor-in-chief of Odintsovskaya Nedelya, told CPJ in a telephone interview. "Goshko's trial had been dragging for almost five years and everybody thought this [June 6] hearing would be a formality, so he did not even bring his lawyer." Police took Goshko to a trial detention center immediately after the verdict was read. The defense will appeal, Asadchy said.

Russian courts of arbitration have the jurisdiction to handle lesser crimes, such as domestic and administrative disputes, and divorce cases, according to the news agency Itar Tass. It is highly unusual for a court of arbitration to issue a sentence as severe as five years in prison, according to the Smolensk Internet news journal Ob.com.

Novikov was shot and killed in the stairwell of his apartment building at around 9 p.m. on July 26, 2000. The killer, who was never apprehended, shot him four times and fled through a back door. Novikov's colleagues believe the murder to be politically motivated and related to Radio Vesna's critical editorial stance toward the Smolensk government.

Several days before the killing, Goshko told listeners in July 2000, Novikov said he had information that several Smolensk officials were planning his assassination.


JUNE 28, 2005
Posted: July 1, 2005

Magomedzagid Varisov, Novoye Delo
KILLED—CONFIRMED

Machine-gun toting assailants opened fire on Varisov's sedan at around 9 p.m. as he was returning home with his wife and driver. Varisov sustained multiple bullet wounds and died at the scene. His wife was not injured; the driver was hospitalized with injuries, according to local press reports.

The Kirovsky District prosecutor's office is considering several possible motives, but it considers Varisov's journalism to be the most likely motive, local reports said.

For the past three years, Varisov wrote analytical articles for the Makhachkala-based Novoye Delo (New Business), Dagestan's largest weekly. Rumina Elmurzayeva, editor of Novoye Delo, told CPJ that Varisov had his own page devoted to political analysis, which was often critical of the Dagestan opposition. Varisov wrote that the opposition was trying to destabilize the republic and topple the regional government. Varisov also wrote about organized crime and terrorism, local reports said.

Varisov headed the Republican Center for Strategic Initiatives and Political Technologies, a center for political analysis in Makhachkala, Elmurzayeva told CPJ. Varisov was considered a leading expert on the North Caucasus region, and his expertise was sought by many Russian journalists, she said.

In the most recent issue of Novoye Delo, Varisov examined a Russian army unit's June 4 sweep in the Chechen border town of Borozdinovskaya in which one person was killed and 11 others were reported missing. Ethnic Avars, fearing for their lives, left Borozdinovskaya by the hundreds and crossed into neighboring Dagestan, local reports said.

"Varisov criticized Chechen authorities in his article for failing to protect the safety of Borozdinovskaya residents and appealed to Dagestan authorities to do right by them," Elmurzayeva told CPJ.

For the past year, Varisov had spoken of threats against him and had written about those threats in articles for Novoye Delo, Elmurzayeva told CPJ. He complained that unknown individuals were following him, and he unsuccessfully sought protection from Makhachkala law enforcement authorities.


JUNE 28, 2005
Posted: July 7, 2005

Nikolai Kochurov, Severodvinsky Rabochy
ATTACKED

Kochurov, editor-in-chief of Severodvinsk's independent newspaper, Severodvinsky Rabochy, was beaten by two unidentified assailants and hospitalized with head and arm injuries. Assailants waiting in the entry to Kochurov's apartment building struck him with a heavy object as the journalist left for work that morning, according to several local news reports. Police in Severodvinsk, a city in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia, opened a criminal case but did not immediately identify suspects.

Investigators and colleagues said Kochurov's work was a possible motive for the attack. A mobile phone, money, and other belongings were not stolen, according to local news reports.

"Severodvinsky Rabochy demonstrates the wide spectrum of public opinions," Olga Ovchinnikova, the paper's deputy editor-in-chief, told CPJ in a telephone interview. "Some people could dislike negative information toward them published in the media."

Kochurov did not tell his colleagues about any threats, Ovchinnikova said, and Severodvinsky Rabochy had not published any recent stories that were particularly controversial. The newspaper publishes four days per week.


AUGUST 2, 2005
Posted: August 9, 2005

ABC
Andrei Babitsky, ABC
HARASSED, LEGAL ACTION

The Foreign Ministry announced steps to bar the U.S. television network ABC from reporting in Russia. The ministry said in a statement that ABC reporters had been denied access to government officials and that their accreditations will not be renewed when they expire. Russian authorities took the steps after the network broadcast an interview with Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev on its news program, "Nightline," on July 28.

"ABC is undesirable for contact with all Russian government organizations and bodies," the ministry's statement said. It criticized the Basayev interview as "clearly supporting the propaganda of terrorism" with "calls for violence against Russian citizens."

"Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel said that "broadcasting an interview with someone does not imply any sort of approval of that person or his actions."

The announcement came two days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov declared that ABC reporters were "persona non grata" in his ministry, according to local and international news reports. On Friday, the Foreign Ministry issued a formal complaint to the U.S. embassy's charge d'affaires in Moscow, Daniel Russell.

Basayev has taken responsibility for many violent actions, including the deadly September 2004 attack on a school in Beslan that claimed the lives of 330 hostages. Russian authorities have offered a $10 million reward for his capture.

The interview was conducted by Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky, who has been persecuted by Russian authorities over his reporting on the war in Chechnya. The Foreign Ministry, which monitors the work of foreign media in Russia, said today that it would also investigate Babitsky for allegedly conducting the interview in Chechnya in June without proper accreditation.

Babitsky said the Kremlin's strong response was prompted by the failure of Russian authorities to capture Basayev. "The security services are embarrassed because they have spent vast sums over six years but they still can't catch Basayev, and here he is talking to a journalist. ...This shows how ineffectively they are working," Babitsky told the Reuters news service.

AUGUST 6, 2005
Posted: August 9, 2005

Adam Tuchlinksi, Przekroj.
EXPELLED

Tuchlinksi, photojournalist for the weekly Polish news magazine Przekroj, was expelled from Belarus and banned from the country for five years.

Belarusian security agents detained Tuchlinksi as he was about to board a Poland-bound train in the western city of Grodno, according to international reports. Agents took him to a local police station where he was held for several hours and told he lacked proper accreditation to work in Belarus. He returned to Poland on a later train on Saturday, The Associated Press reported.

Tuchlinski was visiting Belarus on a tourist visa, the Polish news agency PAP reported, citing information from the local Polish Association of Belarus. It was unclear whether he had done any journalism work during his visit to Grodno, which has a sizeable population of ethnic Poles.

Saturday's expulsion follows the recent arrests of several members of the Polish Association of Belarus stemming from demonstrations in Grodno. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has accused the group of scheming to overthrow him, the AP said.


SEPTEMBER 1, 2005
Posted September 2, 2005

Yuri Bagrov, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Harassment

Bagrov was prevented by Russian police from covering the first anniversary of the Beslan school hostage tragedy. Bagrov, a North Caucasus correspondent for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, told CPJ he was held for four hours after arriving in the north Ossetian town of Beslan, where thousands had gathered to mourn the 331 victims of the siege of School No. 1 a year ago. Bagrov was released after questioning but he was unable to cover the anniversary. He said police told him he did not have proper accreditation.

A Russian court pulled Bagrov's passport and press credentials last year as part of a politicized criminal prosecution. By stripping him of his passport the authorities have made it impossible for Bagrov to travel outside the area around his hometown of Vladikavkaz. Beslan is 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Vladikavkaz. Bagrov traveled there with several fellow journalists.

Bagrov said an unknown man in plainclothes stopped him as he left the police station and warned him not to return to Beslan until after the anniversary ceremonies on September 5.

"He told me I would bring serious problems upon myself if I did, " Bagrov added.

Bagrov has been the target of intimidation by police and the Federal Security Service for more than a year.


SEPTEMBER 3, 2005
Posted September 8, 2005

Bert Sundstrom, SVT television, Sweden
Legal Action

Sundstrom, a correspondent for Swedish public broadcaster SVT in Moscow for the past three years, was forced to leave on September 3 after the government refused to extend his visa.

The authorities gave no reason for their action, according to local and international press reports.

Sundstrom covered the war in Chechnya and the Beslan school hostage crisis of September 2004 but SVT news editor Jan Axelsson said the Russian authorities had never complained about his work, the Moscow Times reported.

Axelsson compared Russia's treatment of Sundstrom to the Soviet Union's expulsion in the 1970's of an SVT correspondent for interviewing Nobel Peace Prize Winner Andrei Sakharov, the newspaper said.


NOVEMBER 29, 2005
Posted: December 1, 2005

Olga Romanova, Ren-TV
HARASSED

Romanova said at a press conference in Moscow that she was concerned for her safety and that of her two children. She said that she had been followed by a black Audi since filing a criminal complaint with the Khamovnicheskii inter-district prosecutor on November 28 against the three security guards who prevented her from entering the Ren-TV office on November 24. She filed the criminal complaint under Article 144 of the Criminal Code on obstructing labor activities. Romanova also said that she did not feel safe in Ren-TV premises because the same three security guards were following her around the office.

"I have all the reason to think that it is not safe for me to be in my own office – I'll say it like this, I've been warned by some kind individuals," Romanova said at the press conference. "Under no circumstances do I want to have the same fate as Paul Klebnikov."

Romanova said three private security guards prevented her from entering the TV station on November 24 to host her evening news program "24." She said the show was dropped shortly after she publicly criticized Ren-TV management for blocking reports that they believed might anger the Kremlin. One such story was the decision by authorities not to prosecute the son of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov for killing an elderly pedestrian in a car accident in May, Romanova said.

Ren-TV director general Aleksandr Ordzhonikidze said in interviews that Romanova had been dropped not because of her news reporting but low ratings. Romanova said she did not believe authorities were responsible for her dismissal and that Ordzhonikidze was "simply doing the best he can to please the Kremlin," The Moscow Times reported. Ordzhonikidze has taken Romanova off the air for three months and told her to develop a new program that would attract higher ratings.

The closure of "24" comes a little over a month after two companies close to the Kremlin took a significant stake in the station. Ordzhonikidze was appointed Ren-TV general director in early November, a month after oil company Surgutneftegaz and steelmaker Severstal completed their joint purchase of a 70 percent stake in the station. The German media company Bertelsmann owns the remaining 30 percent.