The pipe used to attack Nikolay Lyaskin. Source: Twitter. The Russian authorities continue to refuse permission to Alexey Navalny’s election campaign to hold public rallies, and campaign activists are, on occasion, being detained. But sometimes the anti-Navalny campaign gets even more serious: Nikolay Lyaskin, the coordinator of Navalny’s Moscow headquarters, was attacked this week with a metal pipe. Police are investigating, but rather strangely.
As a result of a blow to the head, Lyaskin is suffering from concussion. The police quite quickly opened a criminal investigation into what they classified as “hooliganism”, and several days later announced they had found a suspect. True, he was not shown to Lyaskin immediately. However, a video appeared in which the suspect alleges Lyaskin himself had promised the man money if he attacked him. Lyaskin claims this is a set-up. The day of the face-to-face confrontation with the suspect Lyaskin was kept waiting the whole day in the police station, and before he left they tried to take away his telephone.
On a positive note, in Kostroma a criminal investigation has been opened into an assault by a police officer on a volunteer from Navalny’s election campaign, while in Makhachkala an investigation into an attack on a journalist, who works for the news website Caucasian Knot, during a protest on 12 June, has begun.
