Kremlin Says Reporter Alive but Unlocatable--’He’s Moving Around’

Kremlin officials tried Tuesday to calm a growing international uproar over the fate of a missing Russian journalist by repeatedly asserting that the reporter--whom they claim to have handed over to Chechen fighters--is alive and well.

But they declined to provide any evidence and said they can’t say where Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky is.

“He’s alive, but he’s moving around all the time,” said Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, the government’s spokesman on war-torn Chechnya.

Yastrzhembsky is one of a stream of Kremlin officials to insist in the past several days that Babitsky is safe. He and others--including Nikolai P. Patrushev, the head of the KGB’s main successor agency, and Interior Minister Vladimir B. Rushailo--have said that intelligence reports, including interceptions of the guerrillas’ radio traffic, support the assertion.

“He is alive and healthy and moving around all the time,” Deputy Interior Minister Ivan Golubev echoed on live television late Tuesday. “I can’t tell you more because the case is ongoing.”

The Kremlin has expressed irritation with the attention directed at the case inside and outside Russia. Human rights groups, journalist associations and foreign governments have lodged formal protests.

“This is a private matter which should not be addressed on the level of national policy, let alone relations between states,” Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov complained. “It should be resolved by the competent agencies which are supposed to deal with it.”

Russian officials claim they turned Babitsky--who was taken into custody in mid-January--over to Chechen fighters in exchange for three Russian POWs and released a video purporting to document the hand-over. The alleged Chechen fighters shown taking Babitsky’s arm in the video are masked and unidentifiable.

Babitsky--a 35-year-old Russian citizen whose aggressive reporting earned the military’s particular ire--has not yet surfaced on the Chechen side, and the Chechen leadership insists that none of its commanders has seen him.

His family and colleagues, meanwhile, have pointed out numerous oddities in the video and inconsistencies in the official Russian account, and they say they fear the worst--that Babitsky died in Russian custody and officials are trying to cover it up.

New details about Babitsky’s detention and disappearance have emerged in recent days, although they only raise more questions about the journalist’s fate and the actions of Russian authorities.

One of Babitsky’s colleagues, Vladimir Dolin, said Tuesday that the shirt Babitsky is wearing in the video is one Dolin brought to the Chernokozovo detention camp in northern Chechnya on Feb. 2. Two hours after law enforcement officials at the camp promised to deliver the shirt and other items, they told Dolin that Babitsky had been transferred.

“This means he was alive at least until Feb. 2,” Dolin said.

The following day, Russian officials announced the prisoner exchange and one day later released the video. Dolin said when he watched the footage he immediately suspected something was wrong because Babitsky had “lost a frightening amount of weight.”

“With every day that passes,” Dolin said, “I have less and less hope.”

Russian officials, especially those in the military, have not tried to hide their hostility toward Babitsky. On Dec. 27, the official press center set up to control war coverage released a statement condemning Babitsky and an amateur video he shot from behind Chechen lines. The statement accused Babitsky of consorting with bandits “that he considers worthy of respect.”

“In a short while, he will be ready to exchange his reporting job for the job of a hangman in one of the units of his idols, [Chechen warlord Shamil] Basayev and [foreign-born rebel commander] Khattab,” the statement said derisively.

It continued: “It is difficult to imagine a situation in which an American journalist interviews the authors of the explosion of the American Embassy in Kenya. . . . Russian citizens must know that Radio Liberty has been long involved in the war against them on behalf of bandits and terrorists.”

The Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty network is funded by the U.S. government.