Navalny’s right-hand man, ‘I’ll by no means hand over in opposition to Putin’

(ANSA) – ROME, MAY 18 – “I’ll by no means hand over” combating in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Leonid Volkov, right-hand man of the late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny, advised the BBC in his first interview after the current hammer assault suffered in entrance of his house in Lithuania the place he lives in exile. Volkov advised the BBC’s ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’ that Navalny “requested us to by no means hand over and to proceed our work… to defeat Putin and construct the attractive Russia of the longer term.” Doing so is “the one sensible approach to protect his legacy and be certain that his final sacrifice was not in useless,” Volkov stated, by way of video hyperlink. He then outlined Navalny as a “nice man, an inspiring persona, a real hero and an ideal and really expert political chief”, whose loss of life is an “open wound in our hearts” and which can’t be changed. However now the opposition’s activity is to help Navalny’s spouse, Yulia, as the brand new “charismatic chief”, he added. Volkov then recalled the assault he suffered in March when somebody broke his automotive window and sprayed tear gasoline in his eyes earlier than hitting him with a hammer. The message behind the assault was “we all know the place you reside, we will kill you, we’re in search of you”, he stated. Three individuals have been arrested final month in reference to the assault that Volkov blames immediately on Putin. So he launched an enchantment to the West to cease him. “If there are 50 issues we will do, we’ve got to do all 50. In case you do 49, that is not sufficient, as a result of that is the most important risk to the world that we have seen within the final 80 years,” he stated. (HANDLE).