Liberal media are fanning the scandal surrounding the “brutal beating of a journalist”, Fyodor Khudkormov, during rallies of supporters of Aleksey Navalny in Moscow.
The incident occurred at night in Dmitrovsky Lane, where OMON blocked a group of Navalnyists who were carrying out an unsanctioned march.
Khudokormov with a camera came close to the OMON group. One of the security officers struck several blows to one of the participants of the march and let him go, and then together with a colleague moved across the courtyard.
It was a colleague of the first OMON officer who slightly pushed Khudokormov, who was walking across their path.
“Why are you pushing a journalist?” the young man shouted back.
Then the first OMON officer, cursing, struck two blows with a truncheon, after which Khudokormov screamed and fell to the ground. Later, he actively gave interviews, showed a bump on his forehead, and then went to record the beating at the hospital.
Several media experts suggested that the young man deliberately provoked his own beating. 18-year-old Fyodor Khudokormov is a regular participant of protest actions. Previously, he was an activist of the “Indefinite Protest”. In recent years, he has been brought to administrative responsibility three times. The police handed him over to his parents. Having received a press card, Khudokormov began to hide behind the identity of a media employee. Provoking the police to detain him, he repeatedly became the hero of articles about the “persecution of journalists”. It is characteristic that after each detention Khudokormov complains on social networks about “severe beatings”.
“We sift through it in order. An attentive viewer may notice that he did not present any press card to the police officer. Why did he lie in the interview? What kind of press card does he have? He invented and named himself the outlet ‘Real View’ with 37 followers on Instagram and about 3000 on YouTube. There is no website, and I did not find any registration as a media outlet either. Well, and about the main rule of working at such actions: do not interfere with the police — he did not hear this at all, apparently,” RT correspondent Konstantin Pridybailo wrote on his Telegram channel.
“I would not rush to conclusions about the adequacy of a police officer who used a truncheon to hit a man with an iPhone on a selfie stick. The finale of the scene can testify to the feigned sensitivity of the latter.
An unequivocal complaint to the employee in connection with the use of rude threatening/offensive expressions and profanity. But with the use of a truncheon, there are no questions. It should be remembered that the employee is in a hostile and unpredictable environment. We do not see the beginning of the episode, where we can talk about hindering the work of an employee or about provocation. Especially in the process of detaining a participant of an unauthorised rally,” wrote the writer and blogger Ilias Merkuri, commenting on the episode.
“I don’t want to say anything about the actions of OMON (an examination will show that it has already begun), but Fyodor needs to work on the ‘fall after the blow’. There is no plausibility in such a ‘fall’. However, Fyodor was at the centre of the current bacchanalia on social networks about the harsh actions of OMON, “ wrote political analyst Aleksey Mukhin.
Elena Ostryakova
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