2023-09-14 19:44:57
Deutschland
Was a Russian exiled journalist poisoned on the train from Berlin to Munich?
Because she was threatened with death at home because of her critical reporting, Yelena Kostyutschenko fled to Germany. But the long arm of the Kremlin also seems to reach into Berlin.
Published14. September 2023, 9:44 p.m
The Russian exiled journalist Yelena Kostyutschenko is said to have been poisoned in Germany.
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In the picture she is still working in Moscow in 2009 – following her reporting on Russian war crimes in Ukraine, she is now threatened with death there.
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Kostyutschenko traveled by train from Berlin to Munich. On the journey she felt a touch on her foot while she was sleeping. (symbol image)
IMAGO/Wolfgang Maria Weber
At dinner she suddenly realized that she no longer had a sense of taste.
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Initially, the doctors saw no signs of poisoning. But according to specialists, the journalist was poisoned with an organochlorine compound.
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In her report, the Russian exiled journalist doesn’t give the German authorities good marks.
IMAGO/Jochen Eckel
A Russian journalist is said to have been poisoned on a train to Munich.
Only experts she called in discovered evidence of the attack.
Other exiled journalists have also been victims of poisoning in the USA or Georgia.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s government is said to have carried out several… Attacks with poison were carried out on opposition journalists abroad as the Russian online magazine “The Insider” reports. Among other things, also in Germany: The journalist Jelena Kostyutschenko is said to have been the victim of a poison attack in Munich in October 2022.
Kostyuchenko had previously reported on Russian war crimes in the occupied Ukrainian territories for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gseta. During her time there, she was harassed by Russian agents, and the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, received tips from Ukrainian intelligence regarding Russian plans to murder her. Instead of returning to Russia, Kostyutschenko then sought refuge in Germany and has been writing there for the exiled Russian portal “Meduza” since 2022.
Touching your feet on the train with serious consequences?
In her report she writes regarding the circumstances of the attack. During one She was touched on the foot on the train ride to Munich on October 17, 2022 taken while she was sleeping. Later, when she was having lunch with a friend in a café in the city, she noticed that she no longer had a sense of taste – and three of her friend’s supposed acquaintances had passed her table twice and stopped. “What a small city Munich is,” she thought. “Everyone seems to know each other there.”
On the way home she might no longer concentrate; her sweat smelled rotten. When she finally went to the doctor ten days later, he initially diagnosed her with post-Covid symptoms. But their blood values are alarming, and their liver values are sometimes five times higher than normal. Only another specialist asks the journalist whether she may have been poisoned.
“I’m not a threat to Putin”
But Yelena Kostyutschenko doesn’t think anything bad. “No, I’m not that dangerous for Putin,” she told the doctor and even joked with a friend at home: “Of course, if you are a Russian journalist, it must be poisoning!”
In mid-December, her blood and liver values had continued to deteriorate, for which, according to the specialist, there was only one logical reason: the Russian exiled journalist was poisoned with an organochlorine compound on the train to Munich. Other experts also confirm this to “Insider”.
German authorities are said to have failed
Kostyuchenko survived the attack but is still weakened. In her report, she also doesn’t give the German authorities a good report: she reports bureaucratic hurdles, poor communication and incorrect blood tests. For example, she was only tested for antidepressants, narcotics and alcohol; the Berlin police investigation into attempted murder found no signs of poisoning. After the experts’ information was forwarded to the authorities, the case was reopened on July 21, 2023.
According to Christian Mihr, managing director of Reporters Without Borders, the three attacks on Russian journalists represent an unprecedented escalation. It is the first time that the Kremlin has used poison once morest Russian journalists living abroad since the beginning of the war. Mihr therefore demands that the German authorities and organizations to support persecuted journalists and to raise awareness of this threat become.
While Kostyuchenko escaped with his life, the Kremlin probably escaped with poison prominent critics silenced forever. But they are not always mysterious health problems, some find them powerful politicians and business giants also suffer far more violent deaths. At the end of August, the two Wagner leaders, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitri Utkin, also experienced this firsthand, as you Private jet crashed under mysterious circumstances in Russian airspace.
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