Press Release, 10.04.2023

Photo: Vladimir Putin, then Russian Prime Minister, and Mikhail Beketov, Editor-in-Chief of Khimkinskaya Pravda, at the Russian Government Print Media Awards ceremony, 2011 / Photo by Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant

Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a demand to find and punish those responsible for the death of journalist Mikhail Beketov. This year is the statute of limitations for bringing to justice those responsible for the attack on Mikhail Beketov, the Editor-in-Chief of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, which led to his death. 15 years passed, but those who ordered and performed this crime have not been named.

Rybakov recalled in his letter, that Vladimir Putin met with Mikhail Beketov at the Government Reception House on 13 January, 2012, when the President granted Beketov the Russian Government Prize in the field of print media for 2011. Then Vladimir Putin promised to discuss the Beketov case with the Chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to speed up the investigation. But public information about the progress of the investigation still has not appeared.

“Impunity in such crimes will lead to new attacks on people who protect human rights in our country, who are striving to fight against corruption and save the nature of Russia, and possibly to their death – as happened in the case of Mikhail Beketov,” Rybakov stressed.

In 2008, an attempt was made on the life of the Editor-in-Chief of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, Mikhail Beketov. Beketov was found beaten near his house. As follows from numerous sources, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Moscow Region having studied the materials of the case, came to the conclusion that the attackers intended not just to beat, but to kill the journalist. The investigators said that the version of the crime related to Beketov’s professional activities came in the first place. His newspaper published critical articles about the work of the Khimki administration and the project of building a highway through the Khimki forest.

After the attack, Mikhail became disabled. At the initiative of the Yabloko party, pickets and actions in support of Mikhail Beketov were organised. Mikhail Beketov died five years later, while undergoing another examination in the hospital. In 2013, on the day of Beketov’s funeral, Sergei Mitrokhin, then Chairman of Yabloko, called on Vladimir Putin to take the investigation into the attack on the journalist under his personal control.

The 8^th of April, 2023 marked ten years since the death of the journalist and environmental activist.