A Russian national described as Alexei Navalny’s « top strategist » was the victim of a teargas and hammer attack in the Lithuanian capital.
Associates of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny said late Tuesday that the politician’s close ally and top strategist was attacked near his home in Lithuania’s capital.
Kira Yarmysh, who had been Navalny’s spokesperson, said the assailant smashed a window of Leonid Volkov’s car, sprayed tear gas into his eyes and started hitting him with a hammer. Volkov was later taken to a hospital, according to Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov.
The attack took place in Vilnius nearly a month after Navalny’s unexplained death in a remote Arctic penal colony. President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic was serving a 19-year prison term there on the charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Russia’s best-known opposition politician, had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.
