Elena Patyaeva—a friend of Seda Suleymanova, who disappeared three years ago after being forcibly returned from St. Petersburg to Chechnya—was detained in Grozny. On August 23, Patyaeva stood by the monument to journalists who died for freedom of speech, holding a sign that read: "I demand an investigation into the murder of Seda Suleymanova." This was reported by the human rights project "Slovo Zashchite" (Word for the Defense).
This year, instead of serving time in a colony, former RUBOP operative Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, sentenced to 20 years for organizing the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, served in the Storm-Z unit in Ukraine (a unit for prisoners).
“In order to be clean, you need to roll around in the dirt a little. For victory!” Khadzhikurbanov said in the video in the “SVO” zone.
It recently became known that police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2014, was released from the colony at the end of 2022 and went to the Northern Military District zone. At the moment he is amnestied. He is one of the organizers of the murder of human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
Commenting on the situation, Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Peskov said that the resonance of the criminal case does not affect the decision to pardon convicts.