Yesterday, the Kremlin played down the significance of the attack on a Chechen blogger living in Poland, who is a harsh critic of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Tumso Abdurahmanov, who fled Russia after a fight in Chechnya, was taken to hospital on Wednesday after a man broke into his apartment and attacked him with a hammer, a Chechen rights group said.
It is the third attack on a critic of Kadyrov this month, following the killing of Chechen blogger Imran Aliyev in France and the attack on Russian journalist Yelena Milashina in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.
"An unidentified man broke into Tums' apartment and tried to kill him with a hammer while he was sleeping," reads the statement, published on its website by Vyfond, a Chechen human rights association.
Abdurahmanov defended himself and called the police, who detained the attacker, the statement added.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the frequent attacks on critics of the Chechen leader, replied: "We are not inclined to draw parallels." He added that Polish police are likely to investigate the attack, but "we do not think it is an important incident for the Russian agenda ( news)."
Abdurahmanov, a former director of an electricity company, fled Chechnya after a dispute sparked by an incident in 2015, when his ballot box accidentally blocked a motorcade carrying a member of Kadyrov's family, Kommersant newspaper reported.
Abdurahmanov says another Chechen official, Deputy Prime Minister Magomed Daudov, threatened to take revenge on him. Chechen authorities denied this at the time, saying Daudov only wanted Abdurahmanov to take responsibility for his blogs. In a video posted by Wifond on YouTube, Abdurahmanov holds a hammer in front of the camera and interrogates a man lying on the floor with blood around him.
"Did you come to kill me?" Abdurahmanov asks in Russian. The man replies that he was only told to scare the blogger.
YouTube later removed the clip after some users complained about the blood being seen, Wyfond said.
Bonus video:
