Leonid Volkov,
the chief strategist and closest collaborator of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, accused "henchmen" of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday of being behind a brutal attack that left him hospitalized in the Lithuanian capital, and promised "I do not give up".
An attacker attacked Volkov on Tuesday when he arrived by car at
his home in Vilnius
, where he lives in exile, according to police.
The attacker broke one of the windows, sprayed his face with tear gas and hit him with a hammer, according to police.
Volkov
suffered a broken arm
and “for now cannot walk due to severe bruises from the hammer blows,” according to Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation.
He was
hospitalized
, although he was later discharged, and on Wednesday he promised to continue working.
"We will not give up"
“We will work, we will not give up,” Volkov, 43, said in a short video shared Wednesday on Telegram, in which he appeared with one arm bandaged and in a sling.
“We will work, we will not give up,” Volkov, 43, said here in an image shared by Navalny's team.
Photo: AP via AP)
“It was a bandit salute
characteristic of Putin's henchmen
.”
That appeared to be a reference to Putin's tough style and his past as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, when it was considered one of the most crime-ridden cities in Russia.
The police have launched a criminal investigation.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Lithuanian foreign minister, described the attack as
“shocking”.
“The relevant authorities are working.
Those responsible will have to answer for their crime,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The attack occurred about
a month after Navalny's death
in a remote Arctic penal colony.
He was Putin's best-known
opponent
and his fiercest critic, serving a 19-year prison sentence on charges of extremism, seen by many as
politically motivated.
The site of the attack in Vilnius.
Photo: PETRAS MALUKAS / AFP
Opponents and Western leaders
blamed the Kremlin for his death
, something that authorities in Moscow have flatly rejected.
His funeral in the Russian capital on March 1 attracted thousands of supporters,
a rare show of defiance in Putin's Russia
, where a relentless crackdown on dissent continues, as Navalny's widow, Yulia, vowed to continue the work. from her husband.
What was Volkov doing?
Volkov
ran Navalny's regional offices and election campaigns
.
Navalny ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and tried to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election. Volkov left Russia several years ago under pressure from authorities.
Last year, Volkov and his team launched
a project called “Navalny Campaign Machinery,”
with the goal of talking to as many Russians as possible, either by phone or online, and
turning them against Putin before the presidential election
to be held from March 15 to 17.
Shortly before his death, Navalny also urged his supporters to
flock to the polls at noon on Sunday,
the last day of voting, to show their discontent with the Kremlin.
In recent weeks, his allies have actively promoted that strategy, called
“Midday Against Putin.”
Russian independent media Meduza said it had interviewed Volkov a few hours before the attack and asked him about what he described as
“the key risk of us all being killed,”
according to statements cited by Meduza.
With information from the Associated Press