Oleg Kashin, Russian Martyr

Ariel Cohen / November 10, 2010

Last Saturday, two criminals attacked and brutally beat Oleg Kashin, 30, a prominent Moscow journalist. Because he suffered more than 50 blows with a metal bar, he would have died were he not rushed to the emergency room and operated on multiple times.

Kashin is a political reporter for the  popular Moscow daily newspaper Kommersant. The journalist suffered a broken skull, a severe concussion, a broken jaw, and a broken ankle. Assailants broke his fingers in the most brutal way imaginable, tearing out digits and forcing the doctors to amputate one finger. According to press reports, he is in a medically induced coma, and his current status is “stably severe.” His colleagues said that the hit job was professional as the nature of the wounds was highly symbolic: “you won’t talk, you won’t walk, and you won’t write.”

Kashin was my Facebook friend, although I don’t necessarily like his writing that much. But it was a shocker to found out that someone whose face you see online almost daily was almost murdered. (more…)