If a Russian Journalist Falls in a Forest, Can the West Hear It?

A Russian journalist assaulted and left for dead for exposing an abuse of power by the authorities.

The whole world knows the story of Anna Politkovskaya: a Putin opponent gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment after publishing a series of articles on Russian atrocities in Chechnya.

Except this journalist is called Mikhail Beketov. And you are unlikely to hear much of his harrowing story amidst the media circus surrounding Politkovskaya's political murder trial.

Far from the glamour of Kremlin intrigue, Beketov edits the Khimki Pravda, a local newspaper in a town just outside of Moscow. Here's is what happened to him, from a report in the Moscow Times:

“Doctors were deliberating Monday evening whether to amputate the frostbitten fingers of Mikhail Beketov, a newspaper editor and environmental activist in the Moscow suburb of Khimki who was brutally assaulted and left for dead earlier this month

According to doctors, at least 24 hours passed between the attack and the time Beketov was found, his colleagues said. Doctors have already amputated his right leg”.

Why would someone do such a thing to a journalist?

Well, “Beketov, 50, was found Nov. 13 bloodied and unconscious near his home after an attack that his friends say is linked to his criticism of local authorities’ deforestation plans”.

According to the article, “the editor's brother, Mikhail Kursa, said a former police officer — now mixed up in organized crime — was being sought for carrying out the attack”.

While news of Politkovskaya's alleged killers’ trial is a major theme abroad, one of the few Western outlets to have picked up Beketov's case has been the Chicago Tribune (another is The Guardian, with Luke Harding's good report). In it, Alex Rodriguez makes a comparison between the two cases:

Politkovskaya attained fame around the world as one of the Kremlin's harshest critics, writing extensively about atrocities committed by Russian soldiers fighting Chechen separatists. Beketov toiled at the opposite end of the spectrum; the paper he published, the Khimkinskaya Pravda, was a one-man operation focusing solely on life and politics in Khimki.

Yet the vast majority of the 49 journalists who were killed in Russia since 1993 were just like Beketov: local reporters who crossed local authorities regarding small local issues in places most people have never heard of, not big name dissidents challenging the Kremlin.

Of course, the west is right to deplore and attack the culture of censorship and harassment hoisted on the press by the highest echelons of Russia's government. But fetishising figures like Politkovskaya and Paul Khlebnikov leads to a very simplistic view of Russia's lack of press freedom.