TALLINN: Associates of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny said late Tuesday that the politician’s close ally and top strategist was attacked near his home in Lithuania’s capital.Kira Yarmysh, who had been Navalny’s spokesperson, said the assailant smashed a window of Leonid Volkov’s car, sprayed tear gas into his eyes and started hitting him with a hammer. Volkov was later taken to a hospital, according to Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov.The attack took place in Vilnius nearly a month after Navalny’s unexplained death in a remote Arctic penal colony. President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic was serving a 19-year prison term there on the charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Russia’s best-known opposition politician, had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. His Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of regional offices were designated as “extremist organizations” by the Russian government that same year.His death, reported by penitentiary officials on Feb. 16, sent shockwaves around the globe, with opposition figures and Western leaders laying the blame on the Kremlin — something officials in Moscow vehemently rejected.The politician’s funeral in Moscow on March 1 drew thousands of supporters, a rare show of defiance in Putin’s Russia amid unabating and ruthless crackdown on dissent. Those willing to pay tribute to Navalny, 47, kept streaming to his grave in southeastern Moscow for days after the ceremony. Navalny’s widow Yulia has vowed to continue her late husband’s work.
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