Khodorkovsky dismisses letter to him from suspect in Volkov case as FSB ‘provocation’

Exiled Russian businessman and opposition politician Mikhail Khodorkovsky has described the publication of a letter asking him for financial help allegedly written by Anatoly Blinov, currently awaiting trial for attacking Alexey Navalny associate Leonid Volkov in Lithuania in March, as an FSB “provocation”. 

Blinov was arrested in Poland on 19 September on suspicion of organising the savage attack on Volkov, who was left with a broken arm and leg injuries after being assaulted near his home in the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on 12 March.

The handwritten letter, dated 18 November, which Israeli newspaper Haaretz said it had received from Blinov’s lawyer, was posted on X on Monday evening by Haaretz journalist Liza Rozovsky. 

Calling his situation “critical” and saying that he was “not fully able to defend himself” against the criminal charges he now faced, in his letter Blinov also “categorically” refuted allegations made by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation in September that Haaretz part-owner Leonid Nevzlin was involved in ordering the attack.

Nevzlin, a former co-owner alongside Khodorkovsky of Russian oil company Yukos, emigrated from Russia to Israel in 2003, the same year that Khodorkovsky was arrested on tax evasion charges. A prominent Putin critic, Nevzlin renounced his Russian citizenship shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and is now both an Israeli citizen and the owner of a 25% stake in Haaretz. 

“I deny guilt and refute the involvement of Leonid Nevzlin in the crime I am accused of,” Blinov wrote to Khodorkovsky, “I ask you for one thing, to help post bail so that I can fully defend myself and prove to investigators that both I and Mr Nevzlin are innocent.” 

The Anti-Corruption Foundation investigation into the attack on Volkov concluded that Blinov had acted on the instructions of Nevzlin to organise physical attacks on a number of Russian opposition figures, something Nevzlin dismissed, denying he had ever been involved in “any attacks on people, in any form whatsoever”.

When approached by Rozovsky for comment on the letter to him, Khodorkovsky described Blinov’s letter as a provocation, saying that he had never met him but believed him to be a Federal Security Service agent.

While Khodorkovsky has called the attack on Volkov a “heinous offence” that should be “thoroughly investigated”, he cast doubt on the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s conclusion that Nevzlin could have been behind it.

“Either it is true and Leonid Nevzlin has taken leave of his senses, or it is a FSB provocation and a fake that someone spent a lot of money on,” Khodorkovsky wrote on Telegram in September, adding, “For some reason, [Anti-Corruption Foundation head] Maria Pevchikh is confident that it is the former.”