By Dan Whitcomb
(Reuters) – The United States believes Russian intelligence was behind an April chemical attack on a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Russian journalist critical of the Kremlin, U.S. news organizations reported on Thursday.
Dmitry Muratov, editor of the investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has said that while he was on a train he was splashed with red paint containing acetone by an attacker who told him, “this is for you from our boys.”
Muratov at the time posted photographs of his face, chest and hands covered in red oil paint, which he said badly burned his eyes because of the acetone.
The New York Times and Washington Post both reported on Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Russian intelligence operatives orchestrated the attack, which took place on a Moscow-Samara train.
Novaya Gazeta announced before the attack that it was suspending its online and print activities until the end of what Russia calls its “special operation” in Ukraine.
The Russian government had twice warned the paper over its coverage of the conflict, which Russia says is aimed at degrading Ukraine’s military capabilities and rooting out what it calls dangerous nationalists.
Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Robert Birsel)
