“This attacker… was coordinated, and hired by government and administration of Putin. And we have a lot of evidence to that,” Navalny said.
The opposition leader also speculated in the interview due to air on Monday that his vocal criticism of the President Vladimir Putin could have more serious consequences.
“Well, like, 50 percent I would be killed, or I would not be killed,” he said.
Adding to the opposition leader’s legal predicament, an organization whose owner is close to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev filed a lawsuit on Friday against Navalny and his Anti-corruption Foundation (FBK), the RAPSI legal news agency reported.
The Sotsgosproekt Foundation run by Medvedev’s university classmate, Ilya Yeliseyev asked Moscow’s Lyublino District Court to rule Navalny’s investigation into Medvedev’s property as “false and harmful for the complainant’s business reputation.”
The complainant asks Navalny to drop allegations that tycoon Alisher Usmanov, who is worth $15.2 billion according to Forbes, bribed Medvedev with a mansion valued at 5 billion rubles ($83.3 million).
The Anti-corruption Foundation claimed in March that Usmanov had given Medvedev a plot of land with a mansion in the village of Znamenskoe under the guise of a donation to the Sotsgosproekt Foundation. In May, Usmanov released a 12-minute video addressed to Navalny denying the claims.
“We were anticipating receiving this complaint,” FBK lawyer Ivan Zhdanov was cited as saying by the RBC news outlet. “It’s hardly possible to expect anything favorable for Alexei Navalny and FBK from the Lyublinsky court.”
The Kremlin has refused to investigate the allegations against Medvedev. The prime minister has responded to Navalny’s report saying it consists of “absolute lies produced by a political con man.”
