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fullscreenLeonid Volkov. Archive image. Photo: Philip Davali
Leonid Volkov, former chief of staff to Russian regime critic Alexei Navalny, was released from hospital on Wednesday after he was attacked by unknown people armed with hammers.
– We will not give up, Volkov said in a video message.
Volkov was attacked outside his residence in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Tuesday. Photos of him on social media show how Volkov has several wounds on his face and a bleeding wound on one of his legs.
On Wednesday, Volkov’s wife Anna Biryukova wrote on X that her husband had left the hospital.
“We are home. Leonid’s arm is broken and he can’t walk,” she wrote.
Soon after, Leonid Volkov himself said in a video message on the Telegram messaging service:
– We continue to work and we do not give up.
He also said the attack, during which his arm was broken, was a “typical bandit salute” from Putin’s henchmen.
– The man attacked me in the yard, hit me on the leg about 15 times. The leg is somehow still okay. It hurts to walk. But my arm is broken, said Volkov and concluded:
– They literally wanted to make a schnitzel out of me.
Alexei Navalny died on February 16 under unclear circumstances at a penal colony in the northern Ural Mountains.
In January 2022, Volkov was one of several Navalny associates placed on the Russian state’s list of terrorists and extremists. He wrote on Twitter that he was “proud to work in our team of extremists and terrorists”.
He had left the country barely a year earlier, when the Kremlin’s reprisals against dissidents intensified.