The chief of staff to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died last month in an Arctic penal colony, was attacked with a hammer and tear gas outside his home in Lithuania’s capital late Tuesday, according to Navalny’s press secretary, who said the police and an ambulance had been called to the scene.
Leonid Volkov, who served as one of Navalny’s top organizers, was pulling up to his house in Vilnius when the attack happened. At least one assailant smashed his car window, sprayed him with tear gas and began beating him with a hammer, Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said in a statement released on X and in other comments she gave to Russian media.
Volkov survived the attack. Photographs posted online by another top aide to Navalny showed him conscious but injured, with a mark on his head and blood streaming from one leg. Other photographs showed the bashed-in window of his car, which was parked in a driveway in front of a children’s basketball hoop. Later in the evening, the aide posted a photograph of Volkov being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital.