"On 13 October 2023 and in the following days, an open attack on Alexei Navalny's lawyers began: Alexei Lipster, Vadim Kobzev and Igor Sergunin were detained on remand in Moscow. Olga Mikhailova (senior lawyer of Alexei Navalny) and Alexander Fedulov, who were abroad at the time, were arrested in absentia. Criminal cases on trumped-up charges have been initiated against them and some of their offices were searched, in manifest breach of legal professional privilege, establishing an even more hostile environment for providing an effective legal defence in Russia. It should be assumed that this campaign, aimed at the elimination of Alexei Navalny's defenders, constituted a preparatory phase for his murder."