Attack on Kremlin critic leaves scars
Russian presidential hopeful said one eye is mostly blind after being splashed with dye
MOSCOW— Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, said on Tuesday that a doctor told him he had lost 80 per cent of the sight in one eye after suffering a chemical burn when an assailant threw a green liquid in his face last week.
The eye’s vision may improve, but the outlook is unclear, Navalny wrote on his website, citing his doctor.
Initially, the attack had appeared less serious; dousing opposition figures with green dye is a common occurrence and often attributed to pro-Kremlin activists. Typically, a type of topical medical disinfectant has been used. It is difficult to wash out, but harmless.
Navalny, who has declared his intention to run in Russia’s presidential election next year, had already once this spring been splashed in the face with green dye, without any adverse affects.
But after the attack Thursday, in which a man threw the green liquid in the opposition leader’s face and then ran away, Navalny was taken to a hospital to treat burning in his right eye.
In a post on his website Tuesday, Navalny said his ophthalmologist had told him that he had a “chemical burn on the right eye” caused by something other than the green-coloured disinfectant. “There was clearly a mix of disinfectant and another, caustic chemical,” Navalny wrote.
“I am being actively treated and there is hope that it will be cured,” he wrote.
Over the weekend, Navalny joked that “we are fighting for the eye to remain transparent, but if that doesn’t succeed (and there is a chance, alas) then Russia will have a president with a stylish, white eye.”
Noting that the dousing attacks were growing more serious, Navalny also posted pictures of Hollywoodstyle special effects, humorous suggestions about his possible appearance by the time next year’s election
“We are fighting for the eye to remain transparent, but if that doesn’t succeed then Russia will have a president with a stylish, white eye.” ALEXEI NAVALNY RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER
rolls around.
One depicted Navalny as the Terminator character, with one glowing red eye. Another showed a man with half his face melted away, revealing his grinning teeth.
A pro-Kremlin television station, Ren-TV, has broadcast video of the attack, which was apparently filmed by an accomplice of the assailant, whose face is digitally blurred.
Nonetheless, supporters of Navalny have said they identified the man, based on his build and clothes, as the same pro-government activist who last year splashed urine on photographs by the American photographer Jock Sturges at a Moscow art gallery, forcing the exhibit to close.
Navalny, in the post on Tuesday, said he believed that this identification was correct. Moscow police have formally opened an investigation, but appear to be stalling, Navalny wrote, as they have not interviewed witnesses from among his supporters, sought surveillance video or made arrests.
Attacks on Russian opposition politicians are seldom solved. In 2015, assailants shot to death Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, on a sidewalk near the Kremlin. The authorities have put a man suspected of being the gunman, along with his accomplices, on trial, but they have made no headway in finding out who ordered the assassination.
In an attack in 2013 related to internal politics within the Bolshoi Theater, an assailant splashed acid in the face of the artistic director, Sergei Y. Filin, disfiguring and partly blinding him.