Two people have been detained in Poland on suspicion of attacking Leonid Volkov, a top ally of late Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, the president of Lithuania announced Friday.
Volkov was briefly hospitalised last month after he was ambushed and attacked outside his house in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and repeatedly struck him with a hammer, breaking his left arm and bloodying his left leg before fleeing the scene.
The Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nausėda, announced the arrests to reporters in Vilnius and thanked Poland for its work.
“Two people have been detained in Poland on suspicion of beating Russian opposition leader Leonid Volkov,” Nausėda said. “I thank the Republic of Poland for the excellent work it has done. I have discussed this with the Polish president and thanked them for their excellent cooperation.”
Lithuanian prosecutors said the two suspects were Polish citizens who were charged with intentionally harming Volkov for his political beliefs. The prosecutors said the suspects would be handed over to Lithuania in May.
Nausėda has previously blamed Russia for the attack. Lithuanian counterintelligence said at the time that it was the work of Russian special services.
Volkov in a post on X thanked the Lithuanian and Polish law enforcement agencies.
“It is of enormous importance to investigate and to expose all the chain of command, from Putin to the guy with the hammer.”
Volkov is one of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures and was a close confidant of Navalny, working as the late leader’s chief of staff and as chair of his Anti-Corruption Foundation until 2023.
The assault marked the first attack on Navalny’s allies since they left Russia more than three years ago.
The attack on Volkov took place nearly a month after Navalny’s unexplained death in a remote Arctic penal colony.
Volkov and other members of the Navalny team have lived in Lithuania since Russian authorities classified Navalny’s groups as extremist organisations in 2021.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, in an interview with Time magazine this week said that the attack on Volkov prompted her to hire a bodyguard.
The arrests on Friday come as Moscow appears to be stepping up its clandestine operations in Europe. On Thursday, Germany announced that it had detained two German-Russian nationals on suspicion of plotting sabotage attacks, including on US military facilities, in what officials called a serious effort to undermine military support for Ukraine.
On the same day, Poland also said it had arrested Polish citizens on allegations that they aided a plot by Russian intelligence services to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.