Murder confession after 20 years: investigative journalist in St. Petersburg!

Murder confession after 20 years: investigative journalist in St. Petersburg!

A shocking confession has shaken the media landscape in Russia: Former Interior Ministry colonel Mikhail Smirnov has admitted to murdering journalist Maxim Maximov in 2004. This happened in St. Petersburg, where the body of the investigative journalist, who worked for the renowned Fontanka platform, was found in a forest. In his reports, Maximov had exposed corruption and the misdeeds of the state security forces, which apparently made him a target for the perpetrators. According to the Investigative Committee, Smirnov also suggested two other murders that could be related to his crimes. These revelations were made by the Small newspaper published.

St. Petersburg was notorious for its high crime rate during the 1990s, when Smirnov had a distinguished career as a police officer. “His work is peppered with corpses, beatings and the urge to put his own people in prison,” said the Internet portal Fontanka about Smirnov. The governments of recent years have repeatedly been confronted with suspicions that they are making journalists who expose abuses a threat to their own power and are prosecuting them or even killing them in order to silence them. Given the tragic list of murdered journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova, Maximov's case fits into a bleak picture that shows a persistent lack of justice Daily Mirror reported.

The resigned Smirnov seems to want to consider whether he will reactivate himself in the war against Ukraine. It remains unclear how the overwhelming evidence and the deadly legacy of the perpetrator families in Russia should be dealt with. The murder of Maxim Maximov is therefore not an isolated incident, but part of a frightening story about the fate of journalists who fight for the truth.