Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said Monday that his country will seriously consider claims that Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin ordered an attack on Navalny ally Leonid Volkov.
“We will always support the opposition as they fight against the Putin regime, and we will carefully examine all claims about who organized what,” Nauseda told the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT in what marks the first public response from Nauseda regarding the controversy.
Last week, Alexei Navalny’s team published an investigation accusing Nevzlin, an exiled billionaire and close associate of Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of orchestrating Volkov’s beating in Lithuania in March. He was also accused of organizing attacks against Navalny aide Ivan Zhdanov in Switzerland and the wife of economist Maxim Mironov in Argentina.
Nevzlin has denied having involvement in “any attacks on people, in any form whatsoever,” adding that “justice will confirm the absurdity and complete baselessness of the accusations against me.”
Khodorkovsky, the former owner of Yukos, said that his investigative outlet, Dossier Center, had been alerted to Nevzlin’s possible involvement earlier this summer. However, Dossier Center ultimately concluded that the evidence provided was insufficient to meet its investigative standards.
Nauseda on Monday emphasized that members of the Russian and Belarusian opposition “will be able to operate freely and be safe” in Lithuania, describing it as a point of honor for a “civilized, democratic nation.”
Lithuania is one of several European countries where anti-war Russians have found refuge since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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