Yevgenia Khasis. Photo: Igor Nadezhdin / lenta.ru
An accomplice to the 2009 double murder of a Novaya Gazeta journalist and a human rights lawyer by far-right extremists has been released from a Russian penal colony after 16 years behind bars, state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Saturday.
Yevgenia Khasis was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2011 after being convicted of being an accomplice to her boyfriend Nikita Tikhonov in the 2009 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov.
Tikhonov, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2011, led the Battle Organisation of Russian Nationalists (BORN), a now-defunct neo-Nazi group, alongside co-founder Ilya Goryachev, who in 2015 also received a life sentence for organising the murders of Markelov, Baburova and four others, as well as for establishing and running a neo-Nazi group and illegally possessing firearms.
RIA Novosti did not specify when Khasis had been released from the women’s penal colony in the central Russian republic of Mordovia where she had been serving her sentence, but reported that in late August she was placed under “administrative supervision”, meaning she would be subject to certain restrictions on her movement and activities after her release.
A prominent lawyer who had represented Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya before her murder in 2006, as well as various left-wing and anti-fascist groups, Markelov was gunned down by Tikhonov as he left a press conference in central Moscow on 19 January 2009. Baburova, who worked as a freelance journalist for Novaya Gazeta, was shot in the back of the head after rushing to Markelov’s aid.
In 2024, Russian news outlet Podyom reported that Khasis had sought early release from prison to fight in Ukraine, a now common method used by convicted criminals to secure a presidential pardon in exchange for military service. Earlier in September, reports also emerged that Tikhonov and Goryachev were attempting to secure early release from their sentences under the same scheme.
