Vladimir Kara-Murza, deputy leader of the PARNAS opposition party, says he was attacked earlier today in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, while filming a documentary about Boris Nemtsov, the former deputy prime minister who was murdered in Moscow in February 2015. Kara-Murza says three men wearing hoods and masks stormed a cafe where he was having lunch and threw eggs at him and his colleague.
“They aimed for the head and face,” Kara-Murza wrote on Facebook. “They nailed my left eye, and ruined my clothes. Then they ran off — probably for their fee.”
In late May 2015, Kara-Murza became suddenly ill during a meeting in Moscow. After falling into a coma briefly, he survived and has slowly recovered. The cause of the illness remains a mystery.
In recent months, there has been a series of similar attacks against members of the Russian political opposition, which PARNAS has blamed on the far-right People's Liberation Front (NOD).
In February, PARNAS chairman Mikhail Kasyanov was attacked with eggs in the city of Vladimir. In March, unknown persons threw cakes and condoms at anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny in Novosibirsk. That same month, Igor Kalyapin, a human rights activist in Chechnya, was beaten and doused in green paint. Last month, Kasyanov and his entourage were attacked again in Stavropol.
NOD has denied any involvement in the attacks.
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