Brutal hammer attack on Navalny aide 'likely' Russian operation, says Lithuania

13 March 2024 , 12:00

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A brutal attack on Alexei Navalny's aide was 'likely' carried out by Russia, says Lithuania (Image: Courtesy of X user @a_biryukova/)

Alexei Navalny's close associate Leonid Volkov has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin's "henchmen" of being behind a brutal attack that left him hospitalised in Lithuania's capital.

Police said an assailant attacked Volkov on Tuesday as he arrived in a car at his Vilnius home, where he lives in exile. The attacker smashed one of his car's windows, sprayed tear gas into his eyes, and hit him with a hammer, police said.

Volkov suffered a broken arm and is unable to walk because of the "severe bruising from the hammer blows", according to Navalny's The Anti-Corruption Foundation. He was taken to the hospital, but later released - and on Wednesday, he vowed to keep up his work.

READ MORE: Alexei Navalny aide seriously injured after being attacked with hammer outside his home

Leonid Volkov with Alexei Navalny and Yulia Navalnaya at a mass march marking the first anniversary of the killing of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in Moscow, Russia, on February 27, 2016 (Getty Images)

"We will work, we will not give up," 43-year-old Volkov said in a short video posted on Telegram on Wednesday, speaking with his arm bandaged and in a sling. "It was a characteristic bandit greeting from Putin's henchmen."

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This seemed to be a reference to both Putin's thuggish style and his stint as a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s when it was considered one of the most criminal cities in Russia. Police have launched a criminal investigation.

Leonid Volkov being loaded into an ambulance after he was attacked outside his home in Vilnius (Courtesy of X user @teamnavalny/)

The State Security Department (VSD) said on Wednesday: "It is likely that the attack on Leonid Volkov in Vilnius on March 12, 2024, is a Russian-organised and implemented operation aimed at stopping the implementation of the Russian opposition’s projects in connection with the forthcoming undemocratic Russian presidential elections."

Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania's foreign minister, called the attack "shocking." He wrote on X, formerly called Twitter: "Relevant authorities are at work. Perpetrators will have to answer for their crime."

Authorities said Vladimir Putin is likely behind the attack (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė, the threat level in Lithuania has not increased despite the attack on Volkov, reported LRT. "As far as the threat level in our country is concerned, it certainly has not increased as a result of this particular event. I want to assure you that our people can feel safe," she told journalists on Wednesday.

"Of course, such provocations, have been seen lately and have become our daily routine. And especially [...] we can see that they may increase, probably in connection with the pseudo-elections in Russia," she added.

He vowed to continue his work (AFP via Getty Images)

The attack took place nearly a month after Navalny's unexplained death in a remote Arctic penal colony. He was Russia's best-known opposition figure and Putin's fiercest critic. Navalny had been jailed since January 2021 and was serving a 19-year prison term there on the charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.

Opposition figures and Western leaders laid the blame on the Kremlin for his death - something officials in Moscow vehemently rejected. His funeral in the Russian capital on March 1 drew thousands of supporters, a rare show of defiance in Putin's Russia amid an unabating and ruthless crackdown on dissent, as Navalny's widow Yulia vowed to continue her late husband's work.

Volkov was in charge of Navalny's regional offices and election campaigns. Navalny ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and sought to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election. Volkov left Russia several years ago under pressure from the authorities.

Last year, Volkov and his team launched a project called "Navalny's Campaigning Machine," aiming to contact as many Russians as possible, either by phone or online, seeking to turn them against Putin ahead of the March 15-17 presidential election.

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Not long before his death, Navalny urged supporters to flock to the polls at noon on the final day of voting to demonstrate their discontent with the Kremlin. His allies have been actively promoting the strategy, dubbed "Noon Against Putin," in recent weeks.

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Russian independent news outlet Meduza said it had interviewed Volkov several hours before the attack and asked him about "The key risk is that we will all be killed," Meduza quoted Volkov as saying.

Chiara Fiorillo