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4 suspects have been arrested in Poland following a vicious assault on the previous prime aide of late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny, as a part of what Polish prosecutors referred to as “a multi-threaded investigation” into assaults in opposition to Russian dissidents throughout Europe and the Americas.
The nationwide prosecutor’s workplace mentioned it had recognized eight suspects in reference to the assault on Leonid Volkov in Vilnius, Lithuania, earlier this 12 months and was holding 4 in pretrial detention.
A type of detained was named as Anatoly B, a Russian nationwide and critic of the Kremlin, who was arrested final Friday and is known to have been a former lawyer of the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who sought political asylum in London after falling out with President Vladimir Putin.
The Polish arrests come after Navalny’s staff just lately accused one other Kremlin critic, businessman Leonid Nevzlin, of hiring two Polish males to assault Volkov with hammers exterior his residence in Vilnius in March.
The Russian neighborhood of dissidents dwelling overseas has lengthy been liable to infighting, however the accusations in opposition to Nevzlin have provoked the largest rift within the opposition motion because the begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It is usually the primary time Navalny’s influential Anti-Corruption Basis has accused a supposed ally of ordering a violent assault — which it had initially attributed to Kremlin thugs — on considered one of their quantity.
Nevzlin has denied any involvement in assaults on Volkov and different Kremlin opponents.
The Polish prosecutor’s workplace mentioned two Poles had already been detained in Warsaw in April and charged with assaulting Volkov “due to his nationality and political actions”.
Moreover Anatoly B and the 2 Poles, 4 of the opposite suspects are Polish and one is from Belarus.
The Polish investigation is inspecting occasions “that passed off each in Europe (together with Vilnius) and in South and North America,” the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned.
Navalny’s staff primarily based their accusations in opposition to Nevzlin partially on what they mentioned had been screenshots of personal conversations on the Sign messaging app between the businessman and a fixer, allegedly Anatoly B. He has been charged by Polish prosecutors with directing the assault on Volkov and positioned in detention for an preliminary interval of three months.
Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony in Russia in February, prompting widespread condemnation from western leaders who blamed Putin for his loss of life.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, Nevzlin labored for the Yukos oil firm led by his longtime enterprise associate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Navalny’s staff additionally accused Khodorkovsky, by affiliation, of Nevzlin’s alleged crimes. As soon as Russia’s richest man, Khodorkovsky was jailed by Putin in 2003. After his launch, he joined the abroad opposition to the Kremlin whereas offering funding to a number of Russian unbiased media shops.
Khodorkovsky has denied any involvement within the Vilnius assault and as an alternative accused the Navalny staff of “waging a marketing campaign to purposefully discredit” him.
Berezovsky grew to become considered one of Russia’s most influential businessmen by benefiting from the privatisation of state property that adopted the collapse of the Soviet Union, however he escaped to London in 2000 after falling out with Putin. He was discovered lifeless in his luxurious residence in 2013, a decade after being granted political asylum, in what British police concluded was a suicide.
