Chechnya Milashina attack: Armed thugs beat up Russian journalist and lawyer

Prominent investigative journalist Yelena Milashina has been badly beaten by masked men moments after flying in to the Russian republic of Chechnya.

She described being forced out of a car, hit with plastic pipes and having her head shaved and doused in green dye not far from the airport.

Ms Milashina has received death threats in the past from Chechnya's notorious leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

She was travelling with lawyer Alexander Nemov, who was also wounded.

They had just arrived at Grozny airport to attend a court verdict for a mother of three exiled Kadyrov critics. But they were unable to make the hearing, where Zarema Musayeva was given a five-and-a-half-year jail term on charges condemned as politically motivated.

Chechnya has been run by Ramzan Kadyrov since 2007. A staunch ally of Vladimir Putin and a cheerleader for the war in Ukraine, he has been widely accused of ordering extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture at home.

The journalist and lawyer described how their car had been ambushed by a group of at least 10 masked men in three cars a short distance from the airport. She said later they believed the men had been waiting for them inside the airport.

"It was a classic kidnapping," Yelena Milashina told a Chechen human rights official in hospital in Grozny. "They pinned down then threw our driver out of his car, climbed in, bent our heads down, tied my hands, forced me to my knees and put a gun to my head."