Oleg Kashin

Oleg Vladimirovich Kashin (Оле́г Влади́мирович Ка́шин; born 17 June 1980) is a London-based Russian journalist and columnist known for his political articles.

Early life
Oleg Vladimirovich Kashin was born 17 June 1980 in Kaliningrad.

In March 2003, he graduated from the Baltic Fishing Fleet State Academy in Kaliningrad with a degree a maritime navigation. Kashin sailed twice to sea on a sailing ship Kruzenshtern, being a deck hand and a navigator intern. Participant in international sailing regatta.

Career
While studying at the Baltic State Fishing Fleet Academy, Kashin wrote for Komsomolskaya Pravda in Kaliningrad where he expressed rather sharp views. He continued to work for that newspaper up to 2003, specializing on exclusive interviews and special reports, then moved to Moscow and started working as a journalist for Komsomolskaya Pravda in Moscow. After a while, he left the newspaper, became a staff writer at Kommersant and became the leading Russian journalist covering youth political movements, ranging broadly from the National Bolshevik Party to Nashi. He left Kommersant in June 2005, dissatisfied with the dismissal of the director-general Andrei Vassiliev.

In 2007, Kashin became a regular author and a deputy editor of the Ŗusskaya zhizn (The Russian Life) magazine. In 2009, Kashin returned to Kommersant as a special correspondent. In November 2012, he was fired due to a lack of performance, as reported by the newspaper's management. In 2011, Kashin was present at the meeting with then US Vice President Joe Biden, as part of a group of Russian public figures.

After relocating to Geneva in 2013, Kashin continued writing for Republic.ru, Colta.ru, and Sputnik and Pogrom. In 2014, he created his own website Kashin.guru for "new Russian intelligentsia". From September 2015 to January 2020, he hosted his own show of the same name at the TV Rain.

After moving to London in April 2016, Kashin has successively worked for Echo of Moscow (as a guest host), Republic.ru (as an exclusive columnist), Komsomolskaya Pravda Radio (as a co-host to Maria Baronova). In 2019, he launched his own YouTube channel. Since 2020, Kashin has been a permanent commentator for Ilya Varlamov's weekly news show. Since 2021, he has been a co-host of Mikhail Svetov's weekly live broadcast.

2010 attack


On 6 November 2010, Kashin was assaulted by unknown attackers near his home in Moscow. He was hospitalized with broken jaw, fractured skull, broken leg and broken fingers, one of which later had to be amputated. Police are treating the attack as attempted murder. President Dmitry Medvedev said that the assailants "must be found and punished" and instructed Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to take special control over the investigation of the attack. Prior to the attack, Kashin had been reporting on the proposal to build a highway through the Khimki Forest near Moscow. His reporting covering youth political movements and political protests had also prompted aggressive responses from many pro-Kremlin groups, including the Young Guard of United Russia, a youth group associated with the United Russia political party, chaired by Vladimir Putin. This attack is one of the subjects of the 2012 documentary Putin's Kiss.

In 2015, Kashin got acquainted with the materials of the investigation, including the testimony of the suspects, and accused Andrey Turchak of ordering the crime. This was done as a revenge for a blog post, which Turchak, then a Pskov Governor, commented on with the words "You have 24 hours to apologize. The countdown has begun." No charges were officially filed against Turchak. In 2017, he was appointed deputy speaker of the Federation Council, and Putin awarded him with the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 2nd degree. On 27 November 2018, a full video of the interrogation of the alleged perpetrator was published, in which he said that the attack was organized by the co-owner of the "Mechanical Plant" company Alexander Gorbunov, and the customer was Turchak, who personally hurried the performers and personally demanded to break Kashin’s legs and arms so that he could not write.

In connection with the attack, The Times published an article by its Moscow-based correspondent on the current state of affairs for journalists in Russia. The US State Department, the OSCE, Amnesty International, and Freedom House have all issued statements calling on the Russian government to ensure the safety of journalists and their freedom to operate.

Views and activities
In March 2011, Kashin joined the supervisory board that oversaw the fundraising for the Putin. Corruption report by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Milov, and Vladimir Ryzhkov. In October 2012, he was elected member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council. In March 2013, Kashin participated in single pickets in support of Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina.

Considering the widely publicized case of Andrey Sychev, in which a young conscript lost his legs and genitalia after brutal beating by other servicemen, Kashin claimed that the case was fabricated by Committee of Soldiers Mothers: "The only proven episode... is that Sychev squatted for a while in front of now imprisoned junior sergeant Sivyakov.... All the other stuff was thought up by the chairman of Chelyabinsk Committee of Soldiers Mothers Lydmila Zinchenko, who, after giving a dozen of interviews to liberal media now cowardly conceals from investigators. "

In 2014, without denying that the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation was illegal, Kashin called it a restoration of historical justice. He has been covering the 2014 events in Crimea and the War in Donbass for the influential Russian nationalist outlet Sputnik and Pogrom.

In 2020, Kashin alleged that Yulia Navalnaya's father was Boris Abrosimov, then serving as secretary of the Russian embassy in the UK, associated with the special services, and that her aunt was Elena Abrosimova, one of the authors of the Russian constitution. In response, Alexei Navalny published a death certificate for his father-in-law, dated 1996. Subsequently, Kashin expressed regret for disseminating inaccurate information.

He opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Despite taking a strong anti-war stance and describing the actions of the Russian authorities as cannibalistic toward Ukraine and suicidal for Russia itself, he was included by Alexei Navalny's associates on a list of about 6,000 Russian "bribetakers and warmongers" who deserve to fall under international sanctions because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kashin himself linked his inclusion on the list to the fact that he "has repeatedly criticized people who are now speaking on behalf of Navalny."

On June 3, 2022, Russian Ministry of Justice included Kashin in its "foreign agents" list. He was sanctioned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in October of the same year.

In May 2024, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian oligarch and opposition leader, in the context of a conflict with associates of Alexei Navalny over the release of the documentary "The Traitors" on the events of the 1990s, posted on social media that he was willing to provide "financial support for a judicial dispute to anyone who was unjustly accused." Kashin responded with an open letter, criticizing Navalny's allies and requesting Khodorkovsky's assistance in organizing a defamation trial. The letter stated that Mr Kashin had been included on the list of individuals targeted by the International Anti-Corruption Foundation due to a dispute with the organization's leadership, with the official reason being a pre-conflict post urging others not to forget "who our people are" (the publication was actually published after large-scale events had begun).

On July 19, 2024, Kashin was placed on the Russian criminal wanted list.

In popular culture
In 2001, Kashin appeared on the second episode of Slaboye Zveno, the Russian version of The Weakest Link quiz show. He was voted off and gave an angry speech about his opponents.

A heavily fictionalised version of Kashin played by Yevgeny Stychkin appears as one of the protagonists in the Russian journalistic procedural mini-series Just Imagine Things We Know.