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Navalny’s team claims that another critic of the Kremlin ordered the hammer attack on a Russian opposition figure in Lithuania

Volkov was among Navalny’s closest collaborators. The accused businessman, who was supposed to have ordered the attack due to personal disputes with Volkov, resolutely denies guilt, the British newspaper The Guardian reports on the case.

The head of the investigative department of the FBK, Marija Pevčichová, has now named another critic of the Kremlin, Leonid Něvzlin, as the mastermind of the attack on Volkov. This businessman is an associate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, who lives in Israeli exile after serving his sentence for corruption and founded the opposition platform Open Russia. Nevzlin also lives in Israel, where, among other things, he owns a quarter share in the newspaper Ha’arec, in which Khodorkovsky also has a share.

A greeting from Putin? Navalny’s associate Volkov was attacked with a hammer in Lithuania

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“Volkov was attacked three weeks after Alexei (Navalny) was killed. We barely buried him. In the most difficult moment of our life, someone pushes you from behind, so you fall even deeper and suffer even more,” The Guardian quoted Pevčichová as saying.

She published screenshots that are supposed to show a conversation between Nevzlin and alleged collaborator Anatoli Blinov about the attack on Volkov. Navalny’s team handed over its documentation to the authorities in Poland, where Blinov was arrested in September.

Blinov was detained several months after the Polish authorities detained two men suspected of attacking Volkov on the basis of a European arrest warrant issued by Lithuania. The prosecutors said that they are investigating eight people in the case – six Poles, a Belarusian and the accused Russian.

“I have nothing to do with any attacks on people, in any form,” Nevzlin rejected the current accusations, saying that “justice will confirm the absurdity and complete groundlessness of the accusations.” At the same time, he added that the mentioned screenshots are probably falsified evidence that the Russian FSB secret service planted on Navalny’s team.

Khodorkovsky: Conflicts in the opposition are normal

Nevzlin was also defended by his former companion Khodorkovsky. “Either it’s true and Leonid Nevzlin has gone crazy, or it’s a provocation by the FSB and a forgery on which a lot of money was spent… For completely understandable reasons, I lean towards the latter,” said Khodorkovsky, who flew to Warsaw on Monday to discuss the case he spoke to Polish investigators.

“Of course, there are discussions, conflicts and sometimes scandals between different parts of the Russian opposition,” Khodorkovsky told AFP after arriving in Poland. “But that is natural in a situation where it is not clear how much time is left until the defeat of the regime,” he added.

In March, an unknown assailant broke Volkov’s car window in front of his house in Vilnius, sprayed tear gas in his eyes, and then started hitting him with a hammer. Volkov suffered, among other things, a broken arm, a contusion on the head and a leg injury.

Two local citizens were arrested in Poland for attacking Navalny’s associate with a hammer

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