Once again, an uncomfortable woman for power appears painted green in Russia. Unknown persons attacked Elena Ponomareva, a lawyer for the Moscow Region, yesterday Thursday. They sprayed her with brilliant green at the bus stop. Her retina is damaged, according to local media.
Two suspects in the attack on lawyer Ponomareva have been detained, both residents of Saint Petersburg and born in 1984 and 1998 respectively, according to reports confirmed by Moscow police.
The list of lawyers, journalists and opponents attacked with this liquid is long in Russia and other countries of the former USSR. ‘Zelyonka’ (which translates to brilliant green) is a liquid often used as an antiseptic in Russia: it is arguably the Russian cousin of mercromin. In addition to the potential danger of vision loss, it is very difficult to remove quickly; complete natural elimination may take up to a week. It was popularized as a cheap antiseptic in the 20th century: it protected patients’ wounds, the only problem is that it stained a lot.
The last ‘zelyonkazo’ took place on the afternoon of July 6. Ponomareva is sure that all this is related to her defense: before she received threats with photos of her relatives and then someone spilled paint on her car. She suspects the attack is related to the case of judge Sergei Kotov, who was detained for taking a bribe. The lawyer was called to the court hearing as a witness.
Now the image of Ponomareva with her face and arms dyed green has overshadowed the case. And he recalled what happened on June 4 when several unknown persons attacked the journalist from ‘Novaya Gazeta’ Yelena Milashina and the lawyer Alexander Nemov in Chechnya. Both were heading to the court hearing the verdict of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of the persecuted Chechen activists. Milashina and Nemov’s car was blocked by armed men on the way from the airport. The journalist and the lawyer were kicked and beaten, including to the face, and then their equipment was stolen and destroyed. Milashina was also doused with this glowing green substance and had her head shaved. Both Milashina and Ponomareva had been threatened in the past. Miliahsina has stated that she will continue to travel to Chechnya, “whether Kadirov wants it or not.”
Zelyonka is a triarylmethane antiseptic dye. Often used as a milder alternative to iodine, it is available in pharmacies and drugstores in Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine. In recent years this liquid has become a recurring ‘weapon’ against critics of the Putin government. It is a way of publicly shaming the victims. At the same time, the attacker is more or less protected because it is not a toxic substance and if he is arrested he cannot be charged with a serious assault. Injuries can come when removing it, as it requires an acid to remove it completely. So the victims have few legal assets.
“This is terror. And the State is protecting it,” Aleksandr Pliushchev, a radio host, claimed years ago on Telegram, after one of these attacks.
In Russia almost all the important figures of the opposition -today mostly in jail or in exile- have been attacked at some time with this unpleasant liquid or have tried to stain them. In April 2017 Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader currently in prison, was sprayed with this green liquid that left his face stained. It was not the first time, and again the photo of the politician with his face painted ran through social networks. He used it as a gesture of defiance towards Vladimir Putin’s government: he posted a picture of him with a green face on his blog and wrote that he liked to look like Shrek. Some Navalny supporters imitated the joke and started throwing zelyonka on their faces in solidarity.
One of the most popular bloggers in the country, Ilya Varlamov, was also given the antiseptic on the same day as Navalny. There were policemen next to him; They did nothing. At that time, in the town of Yoshkar-Ola, several assailants broke into the home of a staff member of the Russian School of Investigative Journalism, Galina Sidorova, and also sprayed her with zelyonka.
The liquid used in these attacks is not toxic unless swallowed but can cause irritation. Navalny had to undergo surgery in a Barcelona clinic on one of his eyes. Recovering took months precisely because of a chemical burn on the eyeball.
“I lost 85% of the vision in my right eye. I can only see the larger letters when they show me the material that optometrists use in eye exams,” he explained on social networks. “It looks funny but…it hurts like hell,” she added. In his case, the ‘Moscow Times’ reported that he could have been mixed up with something else, given the serious irritation he suffered.
Mikhail Kasyanov, Russia’s former prime minister and now a Kremlin critic, also ended up green-faced during a rally he attended in 2017 to commemorate the assassination of Russian opposition activist Boris Nemtsov. “The journalists ended up writing more about the green face of Kasyanov than about the murdered Nemtsov,” lamented the Russian writer Oleg Kashin, author of the satirical book ‘Fardwor, Russia!: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin’. In an article in ‘The New York Times’ Kashin warned that innocuous attacks lead to more serious ones. A process of gradual alienation, like the one that occurred in the Basque Country in the days of ETA. “The example of Boris Nemtsov is instructive: he, too, was attacked with chemical solutions; a toilet bowl was dropped on his car; he lived in expectation of further attacks. Finally, he was killed.” Terrorism always starts small and expands from there. Oleg Kashin himself suffered a beating in 2010.
Radio Free Europe journalist Galina Sidorova and political activist Natalia Fedorova have also suffered such attacks. Two members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot were also sprayed by unknown persons.
One of the first cases occurred in Ukraine shortly after the riot that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. One of his closest supporters, Mikhail Dobkin, a former Kharkiv governor, was sprayed with zelyonka at the entrance to a program studio. Of interviews.
Ludmila Ulitskaya, a liberal writer, was also sprayed in 2016 with this antiseptic near the building where she was going to participate in a cultural awards ceremony. The attack was signed by the National Liberation Movement, an ultranationalist group that idolizes Stalin. It was her response to the author’s participation as a judge in an essay contest for high school students. The nationalists did not like this contest, which included writings on Bolshevik terror.
The liquid was invented in Germany in the 19th century. Today this antimicrobial agent is still commonly found in Russian homes and is used as an antiseptic for scrapes and cuts. But it has been the use against dissidents that has brought the green substance to the media. For years radicalism has not emerged among Putin’s opponents, but almost always among his supporters.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
