A second reporter who wrote about a controversial road-building project outside Moscow has been badly beaten up by unidentified assailants. The assault came two days after another leading journalist was attacked in a savage assault.
Anatoly Adamchuk was attacked by men outside his newspaper's office and was being treated for head trauma at a hospital, according to colleagues at the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper where he is employed, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The paper is based in Zhukovshy, just outside Moscow.
The police is investigating the attack on Adamchuk. He was taken to hospital with concussion.
On Saturday, a graphic video surfaced online showing the near-fatal attack on Oleg Kashin outside a Moscow apartment building. Kashin is a political correspondent for Kommersant, an independent business daily. Kashin has had to be put into a drug-induced coma, with a head injury, a shattered jaw and a broken leg. The grainy video showed two mean viciously beating Kashin. At the end of the video, Kashin attempts to crawl away before collapsing.
Both journalists wrote about efforts to stop developers from felling trees in forests near Moscow to make space for roads. An opposition activist who is trying to protect the Khimki forest had his skull fractured in an assault last week. Road construction is considered one of the more corrupt sectors in Russia, and President Dmitry Medvedev has been talking of reducing corrupt practices in Russia.
Last week, an environmental activist working on the same cause was beaten with a baseball bat, according to Moscow News. In an attack similar to that on Kashov, Konstantin Fetisov, a Khimki environmental activist, was beaten by two assailants armed with baseball bats. He remains in an induced coma.
Medvedev responded to the media pressure on Monday by vowing to punish those behind the assault on a reporter ― no matter their potential rank or title. The Moscow Times reported that the President's criticism came at a meeting with journalists of the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta. “Whoever contributed to the crime will be punished regardless of his position or place in society and regardless of his other merits, if there are any,” he said.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced the two attacks and called on authorities to end impunity in crimes against reporters in Russia. "We are outraged by the recent attacks on Oleg Kashin and Anatoly Adamchuk and call on Russian law enforcement to investigate every possible lead and question all possible suspects, regardless of their rank and position," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said in a statement.
