Russian investigative journalist Oleg Kashin has named the suspects who allegedly attacked him in 2010 and left him in a coma.
Kashin published the names and photographs of the three suspects on his website. The alleged attackers are Vyacheslav Borisov, Danila Veselov, and Mikhail Kavtaskin. Veselov and Kavtaskin have been arrested and reportedly say they will agree to a plea deal. According to Kashin, Borisov is currently in hiding in Belarus and has been placed on a Russian wanted list.
The three men are all ex-employees of the security department of the St.-Petersburg-based Leninets Holding Company, which designs and produces aircraft electronics and weapons-targeting systems. The company belongs to the family of Pskov Governor Andrei Turchak, with whom Kashin once quarreled publicly in the blogosphere. According to Veselov and Kavtaskin, who, Kashin wrote for the New York Times in December 2010, “was upset by a blog posting of mine arguing that he had his position only because of his ties to the Kremlin.” The company’s CEO, Alexander Gorbunov, is allegedly responsible for organizing the three men’s trip to Moscow, during which the attack on Kashin took place. According to Kashin, Gorbunov paid the men 3.3 million rubles for carrying out the attack (about $106,500, according to the exchange rate for November 2010).
In the statement on his website, Kashin thanks Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, and the investigators who worked on the case. “They all know that over the past years, my optimism left me many times, and I didn’t always believe that my case would be investigated to the end. The charges brought against the attackers show that I underestimated Russia’s investigators. Now I can admit that,” wrote Kashin.
The Investigative Committee has not yet confirmed the identities of the suspects.
The names of the attackers are known; two of three have been arrested. The rest is politics, but this text is not about politics.
Oleg Kashin, known for his harsh criticism of the authorities, was beaten in the early morning hours of November 6, 2010, outside his home. His fingers were broken and his head was smashed with a heavy object. He was hospitalized in a coma.
After the attack, then-President Dmitry Medvedev instructed Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Interior Minister Rasheed Nurgaliyev to take the investigation under their direct control and do everything possible to solve the crime.
Kashin has suspected several people of orchestrating the attack, including governor Turchak. He also complained about the way the investigation and the case were handled.