Watchdog

Prize-winning journalist Elena Milashina has fled Chechnya amid fears for her safety, after writing that a teenage girl was being forced to marry a police commander much older than her.

Milashina had written that a local police head, Nazhud Guchigov, who was already married, had threatened reprisals against the girl's family if she was not handed over.

Milashina's employer, Novaya Gazeta, Russia's leading independent newspaper, said she fled after she received a warning from police as she was doing more research on the forced marriage story.

Chechnya's Moscow-backed strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied that the police officer was putting pressure on the 17-year-old girl or her family and defended the marriage.

"The girl's parents gave their blessing to this marriage," he said on his Instagram account.

Although polygamy is banned under Russian law, as is the abduction of brides and underage marriage, Kadyrov has shown tolerance for all three practices.

Based on reporting by AP and BBC

Crimea's prosecutors are seeking more than four years in prison for a man accused of attacking a Ukrainian security officer in Kyiv during the February 2014 protests in Kyiv against pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Natalya Poklonskaya, prosecutor-general of the Ukrainian territory that was annexed by Russia last year, asked a court in Simferopol to convict local resident Oleksandr Kostenko and sentence him to four years and three months in prison, her office said on May 14.

Prosecutors on the Black Sea peninsula have charged Kostenko with intentionally inflicting bodily harm on the security officer during the so-called "Euromaidan" protests.

The court is scheduled to hand down its verdict on May 15.

The alleged crime took place more than a month before Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014, which a majority of UN member nations consider illegal.