Activists from a pro-Kremlin youth group have cut off power to a building in south Russia where some of country’s most prominent opposition leaders were to hold a conference, the independent website grani.ru reported.
Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin and Lev Ponomaryov were forced to hold a meeting with supporters in the pitch darkness after members of the Nashi group cut off electricity to the building in the southern city of Krasnodar, campaigning journalist Olga Romanova told grani.ru.
Riot police cordoned the building off saying there was a bomb inside.
Nemtsov, the leader of the opposition movement Solidarity and one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics, has been targeted in attacks by opponents in the past. In 2009, assailants he claimed were members of the Nashi movement squirted ammonia in his face following his criticism of plans to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.