The former strategist for the Russian opposition leader was admitted to hospital following the attack on Tuesday night.
Leonid Volkov, a close ally of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died last month in a remote penal colony, was admitted to hospital after being attacked with a hammer outside his home in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
Volkov is one of Russia's most prominent opposition figures and was Navalny's chief of staff and, until recently, president of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
The Kremlin ordered an arrest warrant for Volkov in 2021.
“Leonid Volkov was just attacked in front of his house. “Someone broke a car window and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker began to hit Leonid with a hammer,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on the social media platform X on Tuesday. the night.
Volkov's wife, Anna Biryukova, also shared photos of her husband's injuries on social media, including a black eye, a red mark on his forehead and bleeding on his leg, which had soaked through his jeans.
Navalny's team later shared an image of Volkov being carried in an ambulance on a stretcher and taken to hospital.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis called the attack, which took place around 10:00 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT), “shocking.”
The “perpetrators will have to answer for their crime,” he wrote in X.
The attack took place almost a month after Navalny's unexplained death in the penal colony where he was serving a 19-year prison sentence on extremism charges, which many consider to be politically motivated.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic, had been jailed since January 2021 when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after receiving treatment in Germany after being poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent. That same year, the Russian government designated the Navalny Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of regional offices as “extremist organizations.”
Navalny's death, reported by prison authorities on February 16, sent shockwaves around the world, with opposition figures and Western leaders blaming the Kremlin, which rejected the accusations.
The 47-year-old politician's funeral in Moscow on March 1 attracted thousands of supporters, a rare show of defiance in Putin's Russia amid a ruthless crackdown on dissent.
Volkov left Russia in 2019 under pressure from the authorities.
Last year, he and his team launched a project called “Navalny's Campaign Machine,” with the goal of talking to as many Russians as possible, either by phone or online, and turning them against Putin before the elections. presidential elections from March 15 to 17.
Shortly before his death, Navalny urged his supporters to go to the polls at noon on Sunday, the last 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.
Russian independent news outlet Meduza said it interviewed Volkov several hours before the attack and said he was concerned for his safety following Navalny's death.
“The main risk now is that they will kill us all. Wow, it's pretty obvious,” the media quoted him as saying.
Lithuanian police said they had been informed that a man was beaten outside his home and that they were investigating.
Police surrounded a pine forest near Volkov's home on the northern outskirts of Vilnius and officers with dogs and flashlights were seen searching the area on Tuesday night.
Lithuania, a member of the European Union, is home to many Russian exiles and has been a strong supporter of Ukraine since Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
