THE BELL WEEKLY: Attacks-for-hire scandal rocks Russian opposition

Hello! This week we look at a major scandal among the Russian opposition after allies of the late Alexei Navlany alleged a close associate of former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky ordered violent attacks against them. We also look at another exodus of tech companies as a result of the latest US sanctions.

Opposition financier accused of ordering attacks on Navalny allies

Russia’s opposition in exile has been hit by a monumental scandal, the likes of which may never have been seen before. Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has accused Leonid Nevzlin, the billionaire former business partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of organizing a series of attacks on the group’s key figures — including the brutal hammer attack on Leonid Volkov in Lithuania earlier this year. The situation threatens to undermine the entire Russian opposition: Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky are among the leading sponsors of emigrant political projects while Navalny’s former associates are still the best-known opposition movement.

What are the allegations?

In keeping with the Navalny team’s ethos, it outlined a string of allegations in a typical video investigation led by Maria Pevchikh, chair of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s board. They alleged that Leonid Nevzlin (more about his background below) set up at least three attacks on the organization’s leadership:

• The beating of Leonid Volkov, former foundation director, in the spring of 2024 in Vilnius. Volkov was attacked with a hammer, his arm was broken and he was sprayed with a blinding gas. Originally the plan was to kidnap Volkov and have him transferred to Russia, where he would presumably be promptly arrested. Later they changed the plan and decided simply to disable him, the Anti-Corruption Foundation claimed.
• An attack in the fall of 2023 on the wife of economist Maxim Mironov. She was hit in the face while walking in Buenos Aires with their 10-month-old son and told to “stay away from Russia.”
• An attack on Anti-Corruption Foundation director Ivan Zhdanov in Geneva in summer 2023. This time there was no serious violence, instead he was pelted with eggs.

Why are the allegations so explosive?

Conflict among the Russian opposition is a daily occurrence. But this is different. Leonid Nevzlin was once co-owner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos oil company, becoming one of his closest friends and colleagues. In the early 2000s, Forbes estimated Nevzlin’s fortune at $2 billion, and in 2019 he himself put it at $1 billion. Among Yukos shareholders, it was Nevzlin who took responsibility for lobbying and political activity. In 2003, with Khodorkovsky in jail, Nevzlin went to Israel. After this Russia accused him of tax evasion and setting up contract killings to help Yukos. He was tried in absentia in 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nevzlin is Khodorkovsky’s closest friend and recently called him “more than a relative” in an interview. Officially, there is no political connection between them: Khodorkovsky aims to be primarily a Russian opposition figure with a focus on the Russian population; Nevzlin focuses more on Israeli politics and support for Ukraine, often speaking bluntly about Russians (calling them “slave cattle” for instance). Nonetheless, any allegation against Nevzlin automatically strikes at Khodorkovsky. The Anti-Corruption Foundation believes the former oil tycoon was well aware that his friend was setting up these attacks and did nothing to intervene.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are two fulcrums around which Russian mainstream émigré politics tends to gather. When the war broke out, the Anti-Corruption Foundation was the most popular opposition force (with many of its members, including Navalny, in jail in February 2022), while Khodorkovsky (in exile since he was released from prison in 2013) was the only opposition figure with his own significant financial resources to deploy on anti-Kremlin causes and initiatives. The accusations against Nevzlin are tantamount to a declaration of war between the two groups, one that will have far-reaching consequences — not least because Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin finance many opposition projects.

Disclaimer: The Bell has never received financial support from structures connected to Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Leonid Nevzlin.

Where do the claims come from?

The Anti-Corruption Foundation’s allegations are based on correspondence between Nevzlin and a Polish-based lawyer called Anatoly Blinov who was jailed in Russia for fraud in the mid-2000s that they obtained. The group says these documents show Nevzlin giving Blinov the orders for the attacks and later complaining that they weren’t aggressive enough, demanding that they should be “harsher and more humiliating.” The Anti-Corruption Foundation believes that Nevzlin was motivated by his hatred for Navalny’s colleagues, with whom he was jockeying for position and influence among the Russian opposition.

The correspondence reached the Anti-Corruption Foundation via another dubious figure — Andrei Matus, known as a “fixer” in opposition circles. This is a common profession in Russia for people with links to law enforcement (often a lawyer or former intelligence officer), who can help clients negotiate clandestine help from the security services in return for a bribe. According to Matus himself, he provided similar services for Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky: for example, he followed Alexei Navalny in prison, bribing investigators with $500,000 in this case.

The source of the information, clearly linked to Russian intelligence, is the weakest point in the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s allegations. There are further suspicions that Matus shared the correspondence not just with the Anti-Corruption Foundation, but also with Russian state television channel RT, which also published the correspondence just a few days earlier. The Anti-Corruption Foundation said it asked two well-known independent journalists to verify the documents. Both Christo Grozev and the Projekt team, who have worked closely with Navalny’s team in the past, concluded that the correspondence was genuine (1, 2). 

What have Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky said?

Nevzlin hasn’t directly denied the authenticity of the correspondence, although he categorically denies any involvement in the attacks. In essence, he claimsthat the allegations are a result of provocations from Russian intelligence. Nevzlin said he hired Blinov to help him evacuate some opposition figures from Russia, but Blinov set him up and started writing “provocative messages” about the attack on Volkov. After that, Nevzlin cut off communication with Blinov and in early August he filed a statement with the Lithuanian police. Nevzlin only shared this side of the story a couple of days after the Anti-Corruption Foundation published their investigation. The correspondence also shows that he did engage in an active discussion about the Volkov attack.

Khodorkovsky immediately stated that he knew nothing of these attacks beyond what was in the public domain and does not believe that Nevzlin was involved. But three days later, a new statement suggested that the Dossier investigation center, founded by Khodorkovsky, was told of Nevzlin’s role by an informant back in June 2024. The informant also reported this to the police.

What next?

Police in both Lithuania and Poland are investigating the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s allegations. That could take a long time. The Russian opposition has tended to back the Anti-Corruption Foundation, suggesting the evidence presented seems quite convincing and noting that it took Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky several days to formulate a response and tell the police about the reports.

New US sanctions hit mid-tier online providers

New US sanctions on the use of American software in Russia — agreed in June — have been in place since Sep. 12. The measures were designed to deprive Russian companies of access to business management, design and production tools. There were some exceptions in place to prevent undue disruption, but this has not worked as planned.

• When the measures were announced in the summer, they alarmed Russian businesses and users, with many fearing that by September all foreign services would be cut off. In reality, though, hardly anybody noticed the passing of the imposition of the Sep. 12 shutdown.
• The restrictions prevent American companies from providing anybody in Russia with IT consultancy or project management services, as well as IT support and cloud services for enterprise management software, design and manufacturing software. However, the US Treasury has issued a broad general license to allow ordinary communications to go ahead, including email, social networks, instant messengers, photo and video hosting, co-working platforms and more. The reasoning was that sanctions should have as little impact as possible on day-to-day life for ordinary Russians.
• The wording of the new rules was so vague that it caused headaches for lawyers representing many IT companies. The main problem was interpreting the terms “enterprise management software” and “design and manufacturing software”. As a result, many IT start-ups whose services are far removed from the military-industrial complex felt it necessary to abide by these sanctions, fearing they may otherwise be prosecuted. For example, collaborative working platforms that officially meet the exemption, but regard themselves as “enterprise management software,” decided to leave Russia. Moreover, several of the departing companies decided in any event to block accounts not only of users based in Russia, but of users who ever paid for services using Russian bank cards.
• It’s hard to calculate exactly how many foreign online service providers have quit Russia in the past few months because of the new sanctions as some made official statements, while others slipped away quietly. But among well-known platforms alone, The Bell found more than a dozen. They include website builders Wix and Ecwid, project management service Notion and its near equivalent Coda, cloud coworking platform Miro, and the Recraft AI service for designers. At least half of these popular services were originally founded by people from Russia.
• A week before the new sanctions came into force, Russian state media began reporting that Google had restricted the creation of new accounts in Russia to comply with sanctions. This turned out to be false but Google did introduce other restrictions. It closed its BigQuery cloud service in Russia and finally turned off Google AdSense. Other large companies responded similarly. Back in June, three days after the new sanctions were unveiled, Slack began warning users in Russia about the suspension of accounts due to the pending measures. At the start of September there were reports that Microsoft had started disabling subscriptions to cloud services for some Russian users (the company started limiting Russian business users back in 2022). But ordinary users were not supposed to be affected by this.

Why the world should care

All of these losses are painful for the Russian market. For example, Notion and Miro were very popular services that helped thousands of small businesses, most of them entirely unconnected with the war. In many respects, the exodus of IT services here is a symptom of overcompliance — many fall under the sanctions exemptions, but still felt it was better not to risk it. For the internet giants, who can afford to hire expensive sanctions lawyers, the risks are lower.