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Former strategist to Russian opposition leader was admitted to healthcare facility after the assault on Tuesday night time.
Leonid Volkov, a close ally of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny who died past thirty day period in a distant penal colony, has been admitted to healthcare facility after getting attacked with a hammer outside his residence in Vilnius, the Lithuanian money.
Volkov is a single of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures and was Navalny’s previous main of workers and, until eventually a short while ago, chair of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
The Kremlin requested a warrant for Volkov’s arrest in 2021.
“Leonid Volkov has just been attacked outside his property. A person broke a vehicle window and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, immediately after which the attacker started out hitting Leonid with a hammer,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday night time.
Volkov’s spouse Anna Biryukova also shared pictures of her husband’s accidents on social media, such as a black eye, a purple mark on his brow and bleeding on his leg, which experienced soaked by way of his jeans.
Navalny’s group later shared an impression of Volkov remaining carried into an ambulance on a stretcher, and taken to healthcare facility.
Lithuania’s International Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis named the assault, which took put at about 10pm community time (20:00 GMT), “shocking”.
The “perpetrators will have to solution for their crime”, he wrote on X.
The assault took spot nearly a month soon after Navalny’s unexplained death in the penal colony wherever he was serving a 19-yr jail time period on prices of extremism, widely found as politically enthusiastic.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, experienced been jailed considering that January 2021 when he returned to Moscow to deal with particular arrest pursuing remedy in Germany right after currently being poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent. Navalny’s Basis for the Fight In opposition to Corruption and a community of regional offices were being selected as “extremist organisations” by the Russian governing administration that exact calendar year.
Navalny’s demise, described by prison authorities on February 16, despatched shockwaves all over the globe, with opposition figures and Western leaders laying the blame on the Kremlin, which rejected the allegations.
The 47-year-old politician’s funeral in Moscow on March 1 drew hundreds of supporters, a scarce show of defiance in Putin’s Russia amid a ruthless crackdown on dissent.
Volkov left Russia in 2019 below pressure from the authorities.
Final 12 months, he and his staff released a venture referred to as “Navalny’s Campaigning Equipment,” with the intention of chatting to as numerous Russians as possible, either by phone or on the internet, and turning them towards Putin in advance of the March 15-17 presidential election.
Not prolonged in advance of his dying, Navalny urged supporters to go to the polls at midday on Sunday, the last day of voting, to demonstrate their discontent with the Kremlin. His allies have been actively selling the technique, dubbed “Noon Towards Putin”, in the latest months.
Russian unbiased news outlet Meduza said it interviewed Volkov many hrs in advance of the attack and he stated he was anxious for his safety following Navalny’s dying.
“The essential possibility now is that we will all be killed. Why, it’s a pretty evident detail,” the outlet quoted him as indicating.
Lithuanian police claimed they had been informed a gentleman was crushed outside the house his home and ended up investigating.
Police fenced off a pine forest in the vicinity of Volkov’s property on Vilnius’s northern outskirts and officers with dogs and flashlights had been found looking the space late on Tuesday night.
Lithuania, a European Union member, is house to several Russian exiles and has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine considering the fact that Russia released its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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