Moscow court upholds police decision not to investigate paint attack on Nobel winner Dmitry Muratov

A court in Moscow has upheld a decision made by transport police not to open a criminal case into the April 2022 acetone attack on Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, Novaya Gazeta reported on Monday.

Muratov was assaulted by two men while he waited on board a train that was due to depart from Moscow’s Kazansky railway station on 8 April 2022. One of his assailants threw red paint mixed with acetone at Muratov, shouting “here’s one for our boys”, while another filmed the attack, which happened less than two weeks after Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend its operations in Russia due to the Kremlin’s introduction of military censorship laws.

“Two and a half years have passed since I was attacked,” Muratov said in court on Monday, adding that he had only learnt that investigators had refused to open a criminal case into the attack as early as in December 2022 during the new hearing. “The investigation did not even consider it necessary to notify me of this, flagrantly violating my right to a judicial defence,” he continued.

Within days of the attack, Novaya Gazeta identified Muratov’s attacker as Nikolay Trifonov, who is known to have links to pro-Russian military group Union Z Paratroopers, which posted footage of the attack hours after the incident. 

The newspaper also named the cameraman as Ilya Markovets, who was briefly detained by police in April but who was ultimately released without charge.

Muratov added that while according to police documents, both suspects had been identified hours after the incident, “other professionals, guided by considerations known only to them and unrelated to their oaths”, had chosen to close the investigation instead.

According to Novaya Gazeta, investigators refused to open a criminal investigation into the attack as they did not consider it “a gross violation of public order”, a decision that the judge found to be lawful. Muratov said he planned to appeal the verdict further.