After the death of Alexei Navalny, his confidants now have to fear for their safety. This is shown by the example of Leonid Volkov. He has now been attacked in front of his home in Lithuania.
A close confidant of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in Russian custody, has been violently attacked in exile in Lithuania, according to independent Russian online media and a spokeswoman. “Leonid Volkov was just attacked in front of his house,” said Kira Jarmisch, who was Navalny’s spokeswoman until Navalny’s death, on Tuesday evening. Among other things, Volkov was attacked with tear gas and a hammer.
“Someone broke a car window and sprayed tear gas into his eyes. Then the attacker started attacking Leonid with a hammer,” Jarmisch described the attack. The spokeswoman did not provide any information about where Volkov lives. But the independent Russian online media Mediazona reported that the opposition figure is in Lithuania. The Lithuanian police, for their part, confirmed, according to the Deli news website, that “a Russian citizen was attacked in front of his house.”
Navalny supporters spread photos of Volkov online showing him with multiple injuries. They showed, among other things, that the 43-year-old had a black eye and blood on his leg that was seeping through his jeans.
Circumstances of Navalny’s death still unclear
Volkov, who was born in 1980, recently warned against lies from the Kremlin and Moscow state propaganda in the Navalny case. If the news of Navalny’s death is true, then Navalny did not just die, but Russian President Vladimir Putin killed him, Volkov wrote.
Volkov was one of Navalny’s closest confidants, who, according to Russian authorities, died on February 16 in a Russian prison camp in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence. The politician, weakened by a poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement, is said to have collapsed during a tour of the icy prison yard in mid-February and died despite attempts to resuscitate him.
According to Russian information, the 47-year-old died of “natural causes”, although the exact circumstances remain unclear. Navalny’s supporters and numerous Western politicians blame the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin for the death of the opposition figure.
This post has been updated.
Source: Stern
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