Experts: attack on Kasyanov will go unpunished

Any irony about the incident with Mikhail Kasyanov is inappropriate; and nobody will be prosecuted for the attack, said the experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot". Igor Kalyapin, a rights defender, who himself was attacked by unidentified persons in 2014 after criticizing Kadyrov, is convinced that Chechen authorities were involved in attacking Kasyanov. He stressed that the attack on him had also gone unpunished.

According to Mikhail Kasyanov, the leader of the PARNAS Party and a former Russia's Prime Minister, on February 9 at a Moscow restaurant, ten men threw a cake at him and pronounced threatened at him. The attackers spoke the Chechen language, Kasyanov's supporters assert.

The attack on Kasyanov is "symbolic terror," said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst.

"There are fears that such 'cake incidents' may develop into something more. The murders of Boris Nemtsov and Anna Politkovskaya are examples," he said.

Along with that, he pointed out that "involvement of Kadyrov or his people in the incident must be proved."

Nobody will face criminal prosecution for the attack on Kasyanov, said Evgeny Chernousov, a retired police colonel and an independent Moscow lawyer.

"Obviously, we have disorderly conduct here, committed in a public place, which is an administrative violation," he explained.

Ilya Yashin, Deputy Chairman of the PARNAS, has associated the attack with the "upcoming elections to the State Duma, on the eve of which the Democratic Coalition, headed by Kasyanov and Navalny, was created."

"The fact that Kasyanov is openly persecuted is alarming," the "Echo Moskvy" quotes Yashin as saying.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.