Alexei Navalny’s ally was attacked outside his home and vows to never give up

Leonid Volkov worked as Alexei Navalny’s former chief of staff (file)

Leonid Volkov, a close ally of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, vowed to “never give up” the fight against President Vladimir Putin despite being recently attacked outside his home in a BBC interview broadcast on Saturday.

Navalny died in an Arctic prison in February, for which Volkov blamed Putin directly.

In his first television interview since the hammer attack outside his home in Lithuania in March, Volkov told the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” that Navalny “asked us to never give up and to continue our work… to defeat Putin and build this beautiful Russia.” the future.”

This was the “only practical way to preserve his legacy and make his ultimate sacrifice so that it would not be in vain,” Volkov said in excerpts from the video interview broadcast on Saturday.

He called Navalny a “great guy, an inspiring personality, a true hero and a great and very capable political leader” whose death was an “open wound in our hearts” and who cannot be replaced.

But the opposition movement’s task now is to support Navalny’s wife Yulia as the new “charismatic leader,” he added.

Volkov said that during the attack someone broke a car window, sprayed tear gas into his eyes and then hit him with a hammer.

Navalny’s allies shared photos showing Volkov’s injuries, including a black eye, a red mark on his forehead and bleeding on his leg.

Volkov worked as the late leader’s former chief of staff and chairman of his anti-corruption foundation until 2023.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)