MOSCOW, July  4, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - An award-winning Russian investigative
journalist is in hospital after being badly beaten by armed assailants during a
trip to Chechnya, human rights groups and her media outlet said.

 The attack happened early on Tuesday as Elena Milashina and Alexander
Nemov, a lawyer, were travelling from the airport.

 "Elena Milashina's fingers have been broken and she is sometimes losing
consciousness. She has bruises all over her body," the Memorial human rights
group said on social media.

 It said the pair were "savagely kicked, including in the face, received
death threats and were threatened with a gun to the head. Their equipment was
taken away and smashed."

 The Committee Against Torture, another human rights group, published photos
of Milashina in hospital with her head shaved and covered in a green-coloured
dye -- used to target Kremlin critics -- and her hands bandaged.

 In a video, Milashina could be seen lying on a hospital bed recounting her
ordeal.

 "They came, they threw out the driver, the taxi driver from the car. They
jumped in, pushed our heads down, they tied my hands, put us on our knees with
a gun to the head," she said.

 "They did everything nervously. They didn't manage to tie my hands
properly," she added.

       
       - Death threats -
       
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a briefing that
President Vladimir Putin had been informed.

 "We are talking about a very serious attack that requires vigorous
measures," Peskov said.

 Chechnya's strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has been accused of
persistent rights abuses in his restive region, said in a statement online he
had instructed officials to determine who was behind the attack.

 "The authorities began to work immediately after the announcement of the
incident," the statement read.

 The media rights group Reporters Without Borders said it was "horrified by
the savage attack" on Milashina.

And the rights group Amnesty International urged Russia to investigate the
"vicious" beating.

 Milashina's paper Novaya Gazeta, Russia's top independent publication, said
she and Nemov were in hospital in the Chechen capital Grozny.

Novaya Gazeta said she was in Grozny to attend the sentencing of Zarema
Musayeva, the mother of three exiles critical of Kadyrov.

 Musayeva was detained by Chechen forces in January last year in Nizhny
Novgorod -- a city 1,800 kilometres (1,120 miles) north of Grozny.

 Novaya Gazeta in February last year said Milashina had to leave Russia
temporarily after receiving death threats from the Chechen leadership.

 Milashina has covered rights abuses in Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta for years.

 Novaya Gazeta, whose chief editor Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel Peace Prize
in 2021, has since 2000 seen six journalists and contributors killed, including
investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

 By focusing on rights abuses in Chechnya, Milashina has followed in the
footsteps of Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the Kremlin's policies in
Chechnya, who was shot dead in 2006.

 Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova was quoted by Russian
news agencies as saying that the incident "should be carefully investigated and
the perpetrators brought to justice".

 Moskalkova said Milashina was being taken to another hospital in a nearby
region.

"The security of the journalist will be fully guaranteed," Moskalkova said.