The Russian journalist, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and Nobel Peace Prize 2021, Dmitry Muratov, announced that he was attacked on Thursday April 7 by an unknown person. The latter sprayed him with a red product on a train.
“They poured oil paint with acetone into the compartment. My eyes burn terribly. On the train from Moscow to Samara. The departure has already been delayed by thirty minutes. I will try to wash myself”, detailed Dmitry Mouratov on Telegram. According to the journalist, his attacker “screamed Muratov, it’s for our guys”.
This message was accompanied by two photos obviously taken by the Russian journalist himself. The first shows Dmitri Muratov in the reflection of the train’s bathroom mirror, his head, torso and arms sprayed with a red substance. The second photo shows a sleeper train compartment splattered with a large amount of blood-red colored liquid.
An investigation has been opened
“Muratov got first medical treatment and took his train to see his mother (…). We are looking for the criminal who did it,” Kirill Martinov, former assistant to Dmitry Muratov, said on Twitter.
The police said they had opened an investigation and were looking for two men for this attack, quoted by TASS.
The Novaya Gazeta newspaper announced at the end of March that it was suspending its online and paper publications in Russia until the end of the intervention in Ukraine, in full hardening of the Kremlin against dissonant voices.
This Thursday, the publication’s journalists exiled abroad announced the launch of a new publication “Novaya Gazeta. Europe” in several languages. However, it is not a subsidiary of the original newspaper but an independent initiative.