The editor of a Russian independent news site died in a fire on Friday following a police raid targeting an opposition group, Russia’s Investigative Committee and its website have confirmed. In the industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod, the news site Koza.press reported that its editor-in-chief, Irina Slavina, “set fire to the front of the police headquarters.”
City investigators later confirmed her death in a statement and said her body was found with “signs of thermal burn”, while saying there was no basis to link her death to the police investigation, as she was only an eyewitness to the investigation.
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The journalist wrote on Facebook hours before his death: “I ask you to blame my death on the Russian Federation.”
A video posted on social media showed him setting himself on fire on the bench.
Slavina’s website reported the investigation and covered President Vladimir Putin’s protests, his friends and supporters said Friday, a rarity in regional journalism that faces pressure from local officials.
She “died from her injuries,” her site said in a report, which her husband confirmed. Only then did the site become accessible.
Her death was paid tribute to journalists and activists, including officers’ advocate Pavel Chikov, who wrote on Telegram Messenger that he had worked with her twice when she was accused of disrespecting officials and publishing fake news.
Slavina wrote on social media on Thursday that police and federal guards had entered her flat in an early morning raid.
He said he was looking for evidence of a connection to Open Russia, a protest movement funded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which has been unjustly ruled by the authorities, amid protests in the city.
“I have nothing,” the reporter said. Police seized her notebook and computer as well as her and her husband and daughter’s laptops and phones, police added.
He said, ‘I have no means of production.’
Leader of the Opposition Alexei Navalny, Who is said to be a military-grade nerve agent, is recovering in Berlin after being poisoned in Russia by German doctors, who called Slavina’s death “terrible.”
He wrote, “A criminal case was framed against Slavina under political charges. Her home was searched yesterday, the doors were cut and computers were confiscated.” “They led him to complete suicide.”
Local news website NNRU reported that people were waking up in the city streets in memory of Slavina, with a man holding a placard saying “kills the state”.
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