Suspicious attack against a Novaya Gazeta journalist in Moscow

Noone is safe from street violence. However when thugs attack a prominent investigative journalist and her friend in Moscow suspicions inevitably arise that they have been targeted not for their belongings but for their work.
On Thursday night Elena Milashina, a top reporter with the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and a correspondent for the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists, as well as a friend Freedom House representative Ella Asoyan, were brutally beaten. And many in the press freedom community suggest that this might be linked to Elena's work, especially her reporting on the troubled North Caucasus region (Chechnya, Dagestan) and her investigations into the killings of her colleagues at Novaya Gazeta, in particular Anna Politkovskaïa.
To know more:
The CPJ statement
http://www.cpj.org/2012/04/investigative-journalist-brutally-beaten-in-russia.php
The Human Rights Watch statement
 http://www.hrw.org/node/106318