Last Friday, news broke of the arrest of Russian journalist Vladimir Neelov (pictured). He was accused of no more and no less than betraying his country (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code). But how could this happen when the arrested journalist was a regular contributor to «patriotic» media such as «Vzglyad» (where all his publications were extensively deleted), «News Front», «Federal News Agency» and shared corresponding ideas?
It turns out that now it is enough simply to write about the activities of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), even if it is done from the most pro-state motives. In this regard, it is worth noting that in recent months several journalists investigating the activities of Kremlin-linked PMCs have been killed or narrowly escaped death. The most prominent among them are Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev, and Kirill Radchenko, who were gunned down in the Central African Republic while investigating the activities of Russian PMCs (although there is reason to believe that Orkhan Dzhemal in particular was killed in a «convenient» location because of his political and journalistic activities).
Then the journalist Petr Verzilov was severely poisoned. He was supposed to fly to this investigation with the Dzhemal group, but he could not because he was arrested in the Russian Federation. Later it became known that the poisoning took place while Petr Verzilov was investigating the murder of his comrades. After that, Mikhail Khodorkovsky announced that another journalist who was conducting this investigation had been transported by him to England to save him from danger. He also warned journalists that it was dangerous to conduct this investigation in Russia.
This was followed by a major article by Denis Korotkov, a former journalist for «Fontanka», who previously published a series of investigations on this subject and is now a journalist for «Novaya Gazeta». It describes the activities of the poison empire of Kremlin-linked PMC curator Yevgeny Prigozhin, including the use of poisons to eliminate inconvenient figures in Russia and their testing on Syrian prisoners.
After that, on October 17, a funeral wreath with a photo of the author of the investigation was brought to the Novaya Gazeta building, and the next day a basket with a severed ram’s head and a note saying «To the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, greetings to you and Korotkov» was also brought there. Similar «gifts» were delivered to Korotkov’s home address in St. Petersburg.
And now another journalist who was working on the same topic has been arrested. It seems that the owners of the Kremlin machine are trying to silence anyone who exposes their activities. Although it is unclear what exactly they are trying to achieve, as it has long been known worldwide…