Suspect in attack on Navalny associate Leonid Volkov charged in Poland

A man has been charged with organising an attack on a close associate of late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Lithuania in March, the Polish National Prosecutor’s Office reported on Friday.

Anatoly Blinov, who was detained on 13 September before being remanded in custody for three months on Thursday, faces three charges, including carrying out a politically motivated attack on Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov.

The case, which is being handled by Poland’s organised crime department, features eight defendants in all, the Prosecutor’s Office said. Two of the suspects, who were detained in April, are believed to be the perpetrators of the attack on Volkov.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk commented at the time of their detention that the third detainee was “a Belarusian working for the Russians who hired two Poles to attack Navalny’s associate”.

However, the Prosecutor’s Office’s list of suspects does not include Leonid Nevzlin, the former co-owner of Russian oil company Yukos, who was named as the person who ordered the attack on Volkov by an investigation released by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) last week. The same investigation revealed that Blinov had been in regular contact with Nevzlin in the run up to the attack.

The FBK investigation concluded that Blinov had acted on Nevzlin’s instructions to organise physical attacks on a number of Russian opposition figures, including FBK director Ivan Zhdanov, and Alexandra Petrachkova, the wife of economist and opposition activist Maxim Mironov.

Nevzlin and his associates have denied any involvement in the attacks.