HRC member Igor Kalyapin hospitalized after assassination attempt in Nizhny Novgorod

After the assassination attempt, Kalyapin was hospitalized with a suspected concussion.

According to Kommersant , on the evening of August 24, Kalyapin was attacked by an unknown person who tried to cut his face and strangle him.

“The human rights activist managed to call the police, who detained the attacker,” the report says.

Shortly before the attack on the human rights activist, who headed the Committee against Torture* until February 6, 2022, unidentified people in Nizhny Novgorod put up offensive posters. On leaflets distributed in the house where the 84-year-old mother of the human rights activist lives, the attackers wrote that Kalyapin allegedly "sold the fatherland for grants from the United States and Germany" and "helps terrorists." Detractors also branded Kalyapin a "foreign agent". Despite appeals on behalf of the head of the HRC Valery Fadeev to law enforcement agencies, the perpetrators were never found.

At the same time, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov , spoke out against Kalyapin. He called the human rights activist a “terrorist” and suggested detaining him. Kadyrov called for doing the same with Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina . Kadyrov's anger was provoked by the fact that Abubakar Yangulbaev, the son of a judge of the Supreme Court of Chechnya, Saydi Yangulbaev, entered the Committee against Torture organized by Kalyapin. Kadyrov declared a vendetta against the Yangulbaev family after a scandal involving the kidnapping of the wife of federal judge Zarema Musaeva from an apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, who was dragged out of the house by Chechen security forces in the cold without outerwear and forced to walk barefoot in the snow in only pantyhose.

It was also reported that Adam Delimkhanov, deputy of the State Duma from Chechnya, promised to cut off heads on social networks live family members of the ex-judge Saidi Yangulbaev, declaring "hostility and blood feud ": "We will persecute you until we cut off your heads and kill you."

For accusations of terrorism by Kadyrov against Kalyapin and Milashina, the editors of Novaya Gazeta sent a statement to the Investigative Committee, demanding that a criminal case be initiated against the head of Chechnya.

*recognized as an NGO-foreign agent.