Natasha Chernova
Staropromyslovski victim record STA-K008 · Human Rights Watch letter no. 8 · Incident group: Neftyanaya Street cellar
Age recorded: Approximately 50 · Reported death / discovery: 19 January 2000 · Location: Neftyanaya Street cellar, Grozny · Evidence classification: Direct testimony by wounded survivor
Documented circumstances
Natasha Chernova sheltered with five others when soldiers arrived on 19 January. The sole survivor told HRW that after the group was ordered back underground, grenades were thrown into the cellar. When the wounded civilians emerged, soldiers fired on them at close range. The eyewitness specifically described Natasha collapsing after the shooting and identified her among the five killed.
Verification and unresolved questions
The account establishes the survivor’s observations, not a forensic reconstruction or identity of the gunman. Her age is estimated in the original.
Judicial context (4 October 2007): In Goncharuk v. Russia (application 58643/00), the European Court of Human Rights found violations of Articles 2 and 13 arising from the life-threatening attack on the sole surviving applicant and the failure to investigate. The Court described five people killed in the same cellar attack (§§ 69–80), but did not issue five individual judgments identifying each person by name. The name in this file comes from HRW’s earlier eyewitness investigation. Judicial source cross-reference.
The account reflects Human Rights Watch’s contemporary interviews and the numbered list issued in February 2000. Unless independently judicially established, the identification of an individual soldier as perpetrator is not asserted here. Source variants are preserved. Pseudonyms used to protect living witnesses have not been reverse-identified. No unverified photographs are reproduced.
Related recorded victims
Kosym Reshiev · Khava (surname unrecorded) · Lyusya (surname unrecorded) · Unidentified man from Shatoi
Sources
Human Rights Watch, Civilian Killings in Staropromyslovski District of Grozny (February 2000) · HRW, Open letter dated 10 February 2000 (38 numbered names), record 8.
