A prominent Russian journalist was seriously injured on Monday when an intruder broke into the Moscow office of the Echo Moskvy radio station and stabbed her in the throat.
Tatiana Felgenhauer, the deputy editor of Echo Moskvy, was rushed to hospital where she underwent an emergency operation for knife wounds. Doctors said the journalist was in a serious, but not life-threatening condition. Towards evening, Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo Moskvy, said Ms Felgenhauer was in an artificial coma and was breathing through a ventilator.
The Russian investigative committee said it was preparing to charge a 48-year-old man arrested at Echo Moskvy’s office on Monday with attempted murder.
Noxious gas
Journalists at the station said the knife man sprayed noxious gas at a security guard in order to gain entry to the radio studio on New Arbat street in central Moscow shortly after midday on Monday. Once inside, he seized Ms Felgenhauer without a word and stabbed her in the throat. Security guards moved swiftly to wrestle him to the ground and alerted police.
Various Russian media reported that Ms Felgenhauer’s assailant was mentally ill and believed the journalist was tormenting him telepathically from “inside his head”.
The Russian Union of Journalists slammed the stabbing as an “attack on freedom of speech”.
In a sharply worded statement, the Union of Journalists said responsibility for the attack lay with the state-controlled Rossiya 24 television station for broadcasting features vilifying Ms Felgenhauer and other Echo Moskvy journalists as anti-Kremlin activists in the pay of the west.
“We consider these programmes incite hatred against our colleagues and could have provoked the attack on Tatiana by an unbalanced person.”
Kremlin criticism
Founded by a group of journalists in 1990, Echo Moskvy is one of the few remaining independent news outlets in Russia, frequently airing news reports and talk shows critical of the Kremlin.
Ms Felgenhauer has worked for Echo Moskvy for 10 years and co-hosts the radio’s morning news and commentary show.
Monday’s stabbing was the latest in a series of violent assaults on Russian journalists and opposition activists in recent months. Yulia Latynina, an investigative journalist and long-time Ekho Moskvy host, fled Russia with her elderly parents last month after an attempted arson attack on her car.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said he was appalled by the attack on Ms Felgenhauer. "Media and journalists should be able to carry out their activities freely without being subject to intimidation or violence," he said.