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Missing
August 11
Vitaly Shevchenko, Lita-M, MISSING
Andrei Bazvluk, Lita-M, MISSING
Yelena Petrova, Lita-M, MISSING
Shevchenko and Bazvluk, journalists from Lita-M, a small television company in Kharkhov, Ukraine, were reported missing by their colleagues in early September. Fellow correspondents last saw the pair Aug. 11 in Grozny, during heavy fighting between Russian federal troops and Chechen fighters who had seized control of Grozny on Aug. 6. Shevchenko and Bazvluk had traveled from their native Ukraine to Chechnya before warfare resumed in the capital. A third journalist, Yelena Petrova, a senior executive of Lita-M, was also believed to be missing. She did not contact her studio after mid-August, according to a colleague. An anonymous informant called the Kharkhov station on Sept. 13 and claimed that Petrova was being held by agents of the DGB, the former security forces of the separatist Dudayev government, in a bank building in the Achkhoi-Martan district outside of Grozny. CPJ urged Russian authorities to undertake a search for the three journalists. At year's end colleagues had found no trace of them.
September 27
Natalya Vasenina, Respublika, MISSING
Vasenina, editor in chief of Respublika, a local Grozny newspaper, was abducted from her home in central Grozny at 2:30 p.m. by two unidentified masked people, who threatened her with firearms and forced her into a car, according to reports by the Russian wire services RIA/Novosti and ITAR/TASS. The account of the abduction reportedly came from a well-informed source close to the Moscow-backed Chechen government of Doku Zavgayev. Respublika, one of the most popular Russian-language youth periodicals in Chechnya, is described as "centrist" in opinion, which means that it was not critical of the Zavgayev government.
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