"Given the numerous personal threats made in recent days against journalist Elena Milachina by senior officials in Chechnya, the editorial staff has decided to send her out of Russia," Novaya Gazeta reported.

Novaya Gazeta is one of the few strongholds of the free press in Russia and its editor, Dmitry Muratov, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020. The newspaper's commitment, particularly in covering human rights violations in Chechnya, cost the lives of several of its collaborators, murdered, Anna Politkovskaïa being the most famous.

Elena Milachina has aroused the ire of the Chechen authorities in particular by documenting the extrajudicial executions that take place there.

The authoritarian Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, called Ms Milachina a "terrorist" on Telegram in January, prompting Novaya Gazeta to file a complaint for "incitement to hatred".

"My rather senior sources are saying that the threat to my personal security is now high, so I'm going to listen to them already, although I don't like it very much," she told opposition television Dojd on Thursday. .

This case is in addition to that around Saïdi Yanoulbayev, a former Russian federal judge of Chechen origin who became an opponent of Mr. Kadyrov, whose wife Zarema Moussaïeva was arrested in January in the north of Russia by the police. Chechens and forcibly brought back to the Caucasus.

The arrest and crackdown on the former judge raised fears in Russia that notorious Ramzan Kadyrov's forces could operate outside Chechnya.

Accused of inaction, the Kremlin denied on Thursday that it had lost control of the authorities in Chechnya, a territory where two bloody wars had opposed Russian and separatist and then Islamist forces in the 1990s and 2000s.

Mr. Putin received Mr. Kadyrov in the Kremlin on Thursday to discuss “urgent issues”, according to the Chechen leader who assured that “the president always supports us”.

The Chechen authorities have been accused for years of torturing and brutalizing any critical voice, as well as homosexuals.

Chechens have also been implicated in several major assassinations, including that of opponent Boris Nemtsov in 2015.

© 2022 AFP