Russia’s exiled opposition rocked by claims over hammer attack on Navalny ally

Leonid Volkov being stretchered into an ambulance after he was attacked outside his home in Vilnius in March. Photograph: Courtesy of X user @teamnavalny/AFP/Getty Images

When Leonid Volkov, a longtime associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was brutally attacked with a hammer outside his home in Lithuania in March, it initially seemed yet another case of the Kremlin hunting down its enemies abroad.

The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and struck him repeatedly with a hammer, breaking his left arm and damaging his left leg. Western officials and opposition figures assumed the attack, which took place a few weeks after Navalny’s mysterious death in prison, had been orchestrated by the Kremlin.