Navalny associates reveal Leonid Nevzlin’s conversations about preparing an attack on Leonid Volkov: why these documents can be trusted

The Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) has obtained correspondence which suggests that Leonid Nevzlin, a former Yukos executive, may have been behind the attack on Alexei Navalny’s associate Leonid Volkov in Vilnius this March. In order to verify the authenticity of this correspondence, the foundation approached two independent editorial boards before making it public. As a result, the correspondence was studied in parallel with the ACF by Proekt/Agentstvo journalist Mikhail Maglov and Der Spiegel and The Insider investigator Christo Grozev. Our analysis suggests that the correspondence is authentic. Nevzlin himself denies involvement in the attack.

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What is this correspondence and where it comes from. The correspondence with the man who calls himself Leonid Nevzlin is conducted by a person whose details match those of lawyer Anatoly Blinov. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his name would often appear in the news. Back then, Blinov defended TV journalist Sergei Dorenko, worked as a member of the board of directors of Gazprom-Media, and took part in the process of liquidating TV-6 (whose main shareholder was Boris Berezovsky). In 2006, he was sentenced to six years in a general regime colony in Russia for attempted fraud, but he did not plead guilty. Blinov now lives in Poland. The correspondence suggests that it was he who organised the attack on Volkov at Nevzlin’s order.

• Nevzlin was dissatisfied with the results of the attack and did not pay the $250,000 promised to the executors, after which Blinov and Nevzlin started making claims against each other, as was told to the ACF by Andrey Matus. He is one of those who in Russia are commonly referred to as ‘solvers’, that is, a person who helps, among other things, to resolve problems with law enforcement agencies. According to his own words, Matus has been working for Mikhail Khodorkovsky for the last three years — he provides materials for the Dossier Centre’s investigations (for example, the one on Jan Marsalek), finds out what is happening to Alexei Pichugin, who is sentenced to life imprisonment, and helps reduce the sentence of Nevzlin’s relative, who is in prison for drug trafficking.
• It was Matus who was asked to solve the problem and take away the phones used to organise the attempt on Volkov’s life from Blinov and his associates. This way they were going to get rid of the evidence of Nevzlin’s involvement in the attack. But having received the phones, Matus did not give them to Nevzlin but contacted the ACF instead. The film that the ACF released on Thursday, says Matus’ motive is not clear. Apart from money, he was also interested in visa issues — ‘to go away somewhere, to lay low, to get the necessary documents’, the ACF investigation claims.
• In addition to the correspondence, Matus also provided a recording of a conversation allegedly with Nevzlin during a private meeting with Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov in Montenegro. After that, Matus stopped responding to messages and calls, and last week the correspondence was published by RT.

What is the correspondence about: 

Details of the attack on Volkov. The correspondence makes it clear that the original plan was to kidnap Volkov in Lithuania and take him to Russia, coordinating this with the FSB. In October 2023, Blinov reports to Nevzlin: ‘We are starting to track the parcel, to monitor its route.’ ‘It’s about time to end the moron,’ Nevzlin replies. The ‘parcel’ in question is Volkov himself, who is to be sent to Russia.

• By 6 November, the plan becomes more concrete — Blinov asks Nevzlin for €12,000 to ‘rent two ships from the region and from Riga, plus fuel’, as well as a fee for his work. Volkov is going to be taken by sea from Riga and delivered to St. Petersburg. It is not clear from the correspondence why this plan was not implemented. Matus claims that at first the executors couldn’t find Volkov for a long time and were sending Blinov photos of random houses, pretending that they were the homes of Volkov and Maria Pevchikh. 

• In mid-November, Volkov flies to the USA to meet with supporters. He is followed by a Polish citizen hired by Blinov, whose task was described as ‘minimum goal — conflict, maximum goal — “chair”’ (it is clear from the context that this means Volkov was to end up in a wheelchair after the attack). The secondary task of the person following Volkov is to at least steal the documents of the oppositionist, because, as Blinov admits, the conspirators do not know the current address of the oppositionist.
• Judging by the correspondence, Nevzlin is worried that the attack plan will fail, and Blinov reassures him: Volkov will be beaten up in New York and his documents will be taken from him. As a result, everything will be done as planned, and the ‘parcel’ will be shipped. Nevzlin asks: if Volkov is beaten up to the point of being in a wheelchair, won’t that prevent him from being sent back to Russia? The interlocutor says: if Volkov remains wheelchair-bound forever, then there will be no way to forcibly deport him to Russia. But a wheelchair is also a good thing. Nevzlin agrees. 
• Having failed to find the right moment for the attack in New York, the perpetrators continue to follow Volkov in Vilnius. In early December 2023, they send photos of their surveillance of Volkov to Blinov, who shares them with Nevzlin and his assistant, former Israeli police officer Roman Zhelyazko.  
• In March, the attack is carried out, but Nevzlin is not satisfied, Matus says. In the ex-Yukos executive’s opinion (as retold by Matus), Volkov was not beaten up badly enough. ‘You fucked him up so poorly that I could do it myself. I needed him to be incapacitated for the rest of his life, and you just gave him two bruises…,’ Matus recounts Nevzlin’s words.

Attack on the wife of economist Mironov. On the first day of autumn 2023 in Argentina, an unknown man hit Alexandra Petrachkova, the wife of Russian economist Maxim Mironov, who participated in the drafting of Navalny’s presidential platform in 2018, in the street. While doing so, he shouted, ‘Stay away from Russia.’ In April, it became known that the Polish police detained the attacker, he turned out to be Polish citizen Grzegorz Daszkowski. The media speculated that the Kremlin was behind the attack. However, according to the correspondence, it was also organised by Nevzlin. 

• The correspondence reveals that the reason for the attack on Mironov was his Twitter posts criticising Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky. When the attack was already being prepared, Nevzlin commented on one of Mironov’s posts in a chat with the following words: ‘[He’s] crossed every line. He’s just begging for it. I don’t even feel sorry for such people…no one has ever restrained these scoundrels even in the tough times. Now people in Russia and Russians in general have lost the understanding of reputation and responsibility for words’.
• By the time Nevzlin wrote this message, the perpetrator of the attack had already bought tickets to Argentina. Surveillance of the economist’s family began two weeks before the attack.
• After the attack on Petrachkova, Leonid Nevzlin commented on the result to Blinov as follows: ‘Tougher, and tougher again. But more humiliating. Not even a trace.’ 
• Three days after the attack, Nevzlin and Blinov discuss how to draw attention to it. Their idea is to create a Telegram channel where they can upload a video of the attack taken by the attacker himself. Nevzlin recommends cutting off the beginning of the video, approves the name of the Telegram channel and the posts. All this is implemented, but for some unknown reason no one bothers with promotion — the video remains in a channel with a just few subscribers (Proekt managed to find this channel).

Attack on Ivan Zhdanov in Geneva. The correspondence also includes a video of an attack on Zhdanov in Geneva in June 2023, filmed by the attacker himself and not previously published elsewhere. Swiss police tried unsuccessfully to investigate the incident — the attackers were not found, they were also Polish.

Criminal cases against Ashurkov. Nevzlin and Blinov allegedly paid a bribe to have a criminal case opened in Riga against former ACF executive director Vladimir Ashurkov, the film states. Ashurkov told Pevchikh that he had been summoned to London this March for questioning as a witness in a criminal case. In addition to British law enforcers, the questioning was attended by two Latvian police investigators and the prosecutor of the Riga district court.

Purchase of weapons. Nevzlin’s correspondence with Blinov also includes a discussion of the latter’s illegal purchase of several handguns. On 15 October 2023, Blinov sends Nevzlin photographs of the guns.

Why Proekt believes the correspondence is real: 

1️⃣ It contains videos of the attacks on Zhdanov and Petrachkova, filmed in first person by the attackers and not previously published elsewhere. Moreover, the channel where the video of the attack on Petrachkova was published was created on the same dates when the details of its release were being discussed in the chat between Nevzlin and Blinov. 

2️⃣ The correspondence contains many minor details that make it possible to identify the interlocutors. In particular, the communication touches on the life circumstances of many people who are related to Nevzlin. For example, they discuss the problems with the Spanish visa and residence permit of the wife of Rostislav Murzagulov, an ex-employee of the Bashkortostan regional administration, whom Khodorkovsky hired as editor-in-chief of the Open Media YouTube channel (recently renamed NEVZLIN Media). Nevzlin also forwards a message from, as we understand from the context, Maria Solenova (head of the Action4life project), who calls the former Yukos shareholder ‘boss’ and asks for help with a Latvian driver’s licence and, later, a Spanish residence permit for her father. The interlocutors also discuss actions against people and organisations that have some kind of conflict with Nevzlin (for example, Petr Aven or the company IDS Borjomi Europe).

3️⃣ In the leaked correspondence, Nevzlin writes in a recognisable style. In particular, he puts dashes without a space after words, uses colons and two brackets as emoticons and writes the word ‘tweet’ incorrectly (with two t’s). Nevzlin wrote in the same style when he personally communicated with Pevchikh, as well as with another person whose correspondence was used to verify the leak. 

 4️⃣ In one of the messages, Nevzlin gave his interlocutor a link to a specialised website that systematises tens of thousands of profiles of politicians and officials. As Proekt managed to find out, the same page was accessed an hour before the message was sent by a user with an IP address in Jerusalem. This is the city where Nevzlin lives.

5️⃣ The correspondence reveals that Nevzlin has a Belgian residence permit issued in the municipality of Ixelles. This is where the Cooperation for Democracy Foundation (which shares its name with Nevzlin’s foundation in Lithuania) was registered in late 2020. Its founders are Nevzlin’s closest associates. In the correspondence, Nevzlin also sends his interlocutor photos of the application form for opening a bank account in the Latvian bank Rietumu with Leonid Nevzlin’s data. 

6️⃣ The correspondence to whichthe ACF gained access took place in several chats on the Signal app. In one case Blinov communicated with a user listed as Leonid Nevzlin, in another — with the user Arye Bar Am, which translates from Hebrew as ‘Lion, son of the people’. The NumBuster service indicates that Nevzlin’s number was also saved in other people’s contact lists under the same name. Proekt also managed to find Twitter user @Arye_Bar_Am. This account sent birthday greetings to Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s daughter and demanded explanations from Ilya Yashin in 2019 after he called a birthday greeting written from Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Anton Krasovsky ‘disgraceful’.

7️⃣ However, the most incontrovertible evidence of Nevzlin’s connection to this correspondence is contained in his message to Blinov dated 16 November 2023. This message was written the day after the fake news about the ACF’s connection with the so-called ‘Elf Factory’ was published. In his correspondence with Blinov, Nevzlin posted a screenshot from another correspondence he has with Pevchikh in the Signal secure messenger, and added: ‘So, the ACF came at me, but backed down. Now all their words are recorded. And they don’t want to apologise.’ Proekt compared the screenshot forwarded by Nevzlin with the message preserved in Pevchikh’s chat. The messages are identical. Therefore, Nevzlin sent his interlocutor a text that only he could have access to.

• Nevzlin told the ACF that he did not ‘order’ attacks on either Volkov or Mironov: ‘I did not order Volkov, I did not order Mironov, I did not order any corridors.’ The ACF was unable to reach Khodorkovsky on the afternoon of Thursday September 12.

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