Navalny’s top aide attacked with hammer outside home in Lithuania

The chief of staff of Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died last month in a penal colony in the Arctic, was attacked with a hammer and tear gas outside his home in Lithuania’s capital late on Tuesday, Mr Navalny’s press secretary said. said police and an ambulance were called to the scene.

Leonid Volkov, one of Mr Navalny’s top organizers, stopped at his home in Vilnius when the attack took place. At least one attacker smashed the window of his car, sprayed him with tear gas and began hitting him with a hammer, Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh said in a statement on X and in other comments she provided to Russian media.

Mr Volkov survived the attack.

Photos posted online by another of Mr. Navalny’s top aides show Mr. Volkov conscious but injured, with a mark on his head and blood pouring from one leg. Other photos showed the smashed window of his car, which was parked in a driveway in front of a children’s basketball hoop. Later that evening, the aide posted a photo of Mr. Volkov being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital.

“He started fighting back with the car door and with his legs,” Ms Yarmysh told the banned Russian news channel Meduza. “So they hit him wherever they could – on his legs.”

The identities of those behind the attack were unknown Tuesday evening and it was not immediately clear whether it was one attacker or more.

The attack on Mr Volkov took place almost a month after Mr Navalny’s death in prison, under circumstances that have not yet been explained.

The opposition campaigner’s wife and aides accused President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of killing Mr. Navalny. President Biden said Putin “and his thugs” were responsible for his death. The Kremlin has denied the allegations. Russia’s prison service said Mr Navalny had collapsed while taking a walk outside his cell.

Tuesday night’s attack comes amid broader concerns about the safety of those continuing Mr Navalny’s work from abroad. Hours before the attack, Mr. Volkov was asked in an interview with Meduza about the main risks to Mr. Navalny’s organization. He replied: “The main risk is that we will all be killed.”

Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian journalist who exposed the Russian intelligence unit behind a 2020 poisoning of Mr. Navalny in an investigation featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “Navalny,” issued a warning in Russian about Volkov. “The great terror of a small dictator has begun,” Mr Grozev said. “Activists, journalists and just free-thinking people – be careful. Don’t be afraid, just be careful. Don’t make it easier for mindless bandits.”

“The news of Leonid’s attack is shocking. The relevant authorities are at work,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, said in a statement about X. “Perpetrators will have to answer for their crime.”

Mr. Volkov, a former software company executive who headed Mr. Navalny’s nationwide network of regional offices in Russia, fled to Lithuania in 2019 as Russian authorities cracked down on Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption organization and launched criminal cases against his assistants.

In recent days, Mr. Volkov led the call for “Noon against Putin,” a plan for Russians who oppose the president to go to the polls together at noon on the final day of this weekend’s presidential election.

Before his death, Mr. Navalny had supported the idea as a way for Russians to show resistance without risking arrest. Mr Volkov has called on the Russians to implement the plan as a way to honor the opposition leader’s last wishes.