Hundreds of mourners have bid farewell to independent Russian journalist Irina Slavina, who died after setting herself on fire in an apparent reaction to investigators trying to tie her to an opposition group and what’s been described as years of harassment by authorities. Before her suicide in front of the police headquarters in Nizhniy Novgorod on October 2, Slavina wrote on Facebook, “Blame the Russian Federation for my death.”
Yelena Milashina and lawyer Marina Dubrovina arrived in the Chechen capital of Grozny to attend the trial of a disabled blogger who was jailed after publishing a video of the alleged estate of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s family. Milashina had broken the story of alleged gay purges in the conservative, predominantly Muslim region in 2017
The international media freedom advocate, Reporters Without Borders, ranks Russia at number 149 in its 2019 World Press Freedom Index, just between Venezuela and Bangladesh and about 100 positions below the United States – which was ranked 48th
Martin was recommended to the journalists by Russian journalist Kirill Romanovsky, a correspondent with the FAN news agency, which is sponsored by Prigozhin