Speaking Event Hijacked With Toxic Chemicals

On October 12th, the evening before Boris Nemtsov’s visit to Vladivostok for a scheduled appearance, unknown individuals entered the empty conference room, and coated all the seats with an as-yet unidentified liquid. Sources reported that as result, the building was filled with an incredible acrid stench, and the upholstery on the furniture began to run and lose its color.

Nemtsov, a Deputy Prime-Minister under Boris Yeltsin, and former leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, was in town to promote a new book, “Confessions of a Rebel” (with the tag-line of “or Politics Without the [expletive]”).

On the following day, the maintenance staff attempted to air out the auditorium, without much success. Nemtsov was forced to end his presentation earlier than expected, as remaining in the room became completely unbearable for both speaker and audience.

Preliminary results indicate that the room was polluted with several liters of formalin, a compound of primarily formaldehyde. A search for the culprits is in progress.

Other presentations and reading by Boris Nemtsov, as well as opposition candidate Irina Hakamada, have also been wrecked in past months. According to Hakamada’s press-secretary, Constantin Lazarev, a September 19th event in Moscow highlighting the candidate’s new novel was disrupted when individuals wearing white full-body jump-suits entered the room, and sprayed an unidentified gas. The Union of Right forces press-secretary, Lily Dubovna, reported that on the following day, a talk being given by Nemtsov was also hijacked by persons in the same kind of suits, who walked into the bookstore and proceeded to hurl books.

Lazarev and Dubovna are of the mind that the provocations were most-likely organized by the pro-Kremlin youth movement “Nashi.” Dubovna noted that “one of the Nashi leaders was seen in the store.” Lazarev added that “this wasn’t the first provocation,” and called those responsible “psychopaths.”