User:Crtew/Vladimir Yatsina

Vladimir Yatsina, sometimes transliterated as ..., (ca. 1928 – February 20, 2000), a Russian photojournalist for the ITAR-TASS news service in Moscow, Russia, who was killed in Chechnya.

Personal
Yatsina was the husband of a women named Svetlana Golovenkova, she was an economist from Moscow, Russia. Yatsina's body was never found.

Career
Mr. Yatsina was a photogragher for a news agency called ITAR TASS. He worked for this company for around 20 years. In this 20 years Yatsina traveled to many places throughout the world.

Death
Yatsina was kidnapped in Chechnya on the first day of his arrival to the area. He was held captive for almost eight months before the kidnappers decided to move there hostages to another location. In the transition of these hostages, Mr. Yatsina could not keep up. He was suffering from illness and weakness, due to being held captive for all that time. Yatsina was not able to keep up, so one of the kidnappers shot Mr. Yatsina dead. He was killed in a war zone. It was said that Yatsina was only five kilometers or three miles away from the new location when he was murdered in the mountains close to Shatoi. The group that took Yatsina was a well organized group of around 70 Chechens. There was a person that saw Yatsina, his name is Dmitri Balburov. At the time, Russain government says there where around 800 people still being held by the kidnappers. The motive for kidnapping Yatsina was to receive a ransom pay of $2 million.

Context
In Chechnya Russia, there is real problem with kidnapping and has become a common way for violent groups to make money. Hostage-taking is widespread and is seen as one of the most lucrative businesses in the impoverished region. Chechnya is not affiliated with Russia anymore, they have been self ruled by competing warlords since the withdrawal of Russian forces from the territory in 1996. This is leaving ample opportunity to commit crimes such as kidnapping high value photojournalist like Yatsina. Mr. Yatsina was in Chechnya to take photos of the area for an assignment, he was asked by a mutual friend to come down for the job. While he was in the area a group well trained Chechens grabbed Mr. Yatsina. The same group contacted his job and family demanding ransom of $2 million for his release. Ransom amounts of several thousand dollars are regularly paid by relative to free there loved ones, but a $2 million dollars ransom was rare. The ransom was set this high due to the position Mr. Yatsina held in a well known journalist company called ITAR-TASS.

Impact
Vladimir Yatsina was a loyal employee of ITAR-TASS for 20 years before his unfortunate death on the job. Russian forces has tried to step in the Chechnya area to help with the relentless kidnapping, and has made a bit of an impact since the kidnapping of Mr. Yatsina, avoiding these tragedy's from happening again. The kidnapping of Mr. Yatsina was hard on his wife.

Reactions
Vladimir Yatsina's wife, Svetlana Golovenkova, an economist from Moscow, told Amnesty International: "I believe, he was kidnapped by professional criminals before the war, for whom this was their business. After the war began, they lost interest in Vladimir as a "business commodity" and as far as I know, his group of hostages had been transferred from one Chechen group to another several times".

Svetlana Golovenkova said that she appealed for help a number of times to different Russian officials and to the President of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev. She also wrote to the Chechen authorities, but said she had never received a reply.

The Chechen Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ilyas Akhmadov, told Amnesty International on 7 March that the Chechen government had many times in the past condemned the practice of abduction of civilians by criminal groups. He also said that he was not aware of the specific case of Vladimir Yatsina but he would personally arrange an investigation into the case through the official Chechen government channels.

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