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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Abigail O'Leary

Severed pig's head 'threat' left outside home of anti-Putin Russian journalist

A severed pig’s head was left outside the home of one of Russia ’s most respected independent journalists.

The reporter's groundbreaking work included radio station coverage on a station which was closed by Vladimir Putin’ s authorities over its coverage of the war as it continued its invasion of Ukraine.

Ekho Moscow editor Alexei Venediktov, 66, said the sickening act was intended to intimidate him, and persuade him to leave the country.

The pig’s head was seen on a CCTV video being left by a man dressed as a food delivery courier.

"They expect me to be intimidated and they are trying to get me to leave the country,” said Venediktov.

“No, they will not succeed.”

Editor in chief Aleksei Venediktov speaks on the phone at the office of Echo of Moscow radio in Moscow (AFP via Getty Images)

The “anti-Semitic stickers like Hitler's Germany” show that it is Russia not Ukraine “where deNazification should be carried out”.

He said: “The police are already aware.

“Unfortunately, my wife, as a decent woman, began to clean the stairwell and removed everything, but we have it on the cameras.

“A man dressed as a Delivery Club courier came.”

He said that in 1994 he was taken by Chechen extremists “to be shot” so he was not going to be intimidated by a pig’s head.

“Hardly. And also, I really like pork, despite my Jewish origins."

The Delivery Club company said: ”The person in the video has nothing to do with us.

“The video shows an old backpack that we have not issued to couriers for more than two years.

“There were no orders at this address today either."

Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy (REUTERS)

Venediktov’s radio station was seen as the last bastion of independent journalism in Russia and while owned by Gazprom-Media, it was under his editorial control.

But the radio station and its website were closed on 3 March, soon after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine.

‘Judensau’, or Jewish pig, is an antisemitic trope dating from Medieval Europe and intended to mock Jews as swine, said The Times of Israel.

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