Leonid Volkov is chief of staff to imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He was campaign manager for Navalny’s Moscow mayoral campaign in 2013, as well as for his bid to get onto the presidential ballot in 2018.
Between 2017 and 2021 Volkov created and led Team Navalny’s network of regional offices in 45 of Russia’s largest cities. Volkov is in charge of Team Navalny’s political projects, including Smart Voting, a tactical voting campaign that yielded many victories for the Russian political opposition in the regional elections of 2019-2021, as well as in the Duma election of 2021.
Since 2019 Leonid Volkov operates from abroad; there are seven politically motivated criminal cases brought against him in Russia.
An IT-professional by background, Volkov is also the co-founder of the Internet Protection Society, Russia’s leading digital rights NGO.
