Longtime Navalny aide and former Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) chairman Leonid Volkov was attacked at his home in Lithuania on Tuesday night, his associates said.
“Someone broke a car window and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker started hitting Leonid with a hammer,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Volkov, who has lived outside Russia since Moscow designated Navalny’s groups as banned “extremist” organizations in 2021, was later transported to the hospital.
He currently resides in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Another longtime Navalny aide, Ivan Zhdanov, published photos of Volkov after the attack on the Telegram messaging app.
In one of the photos, Volkov’s leg can be seen covered in blood, while another photo showed a car with its window smashed.
An image posted shortly after showed him being carried on a stretcher and placed inside an ambulance.
It was not immediately clear who the assailants were.
Following news of Tuesday night’s attack, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the “relevant authorities” were looking into the incident, adding that the “perpetrators will have to answer for their crime.”
Last year, Volkov unexpectedly stepped down from his role at the FBK after he was forced to publicly admit to writing a letter in defense of sanctioned Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman.
The letter, which he signed on behalf of the opposition organization, called on the EU to lift its sanctions on Fridman and other prominent shareholders in his Alfa Group consortium in an alleged attempt to fuel divides within Russia’s political elite.
