Activists (in Exile)

Leonid Mikhailovich Volkov is a Russian politician who served as the chief of staff for opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s campaign for the 2018 presidential election. He was also the chairman of the Anti-Corruption Foundation until 2023.

From 1 March 2009 to September 2013, he served as a deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma. He also served as the chairman of the Central Election Committee created for elections to the Russian Opposition Coordination Council, and was the head of the campaign office of Alexei Navalny’s campaign in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election. He is one of the founders of the Russia of the Future party, originally known as the People’s Alliance. He was a former chairman of the Sverdlovsk branch and a member of the Federal Political Council of the People’s Freedom Party, and a member of the federal political council of the UDM Solidarnost. He was a captain of the Russia-Ural team at the 10th International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) in 1997, a participant in the 2001 World Programming Championship, in which he took 14th place (bronze medals) as part of the Ural State University team.

Volkov was born on 10 November 1980 in Sverdlovsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Soviet Union. His father is Mikhail Vladimirovich Volkov, professor, Chief Researcher of the Laboratory of Combinatorial Algebra, IMKN, Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education “Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin”. His mother is Susanna Borisovna Volkova (Kupchik), Senior Lecturer of the Department of New Information Technologies in Education, Ural State Pedagogical University. Volkov is Jewish. On official documents however, his ethnicity is shown as Russian.

On March 1, 2009, he was elected a deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma in the electoral district No. 10 of the Kirovsky district (self-nomination). Member of the permanent parliamentary commission on urban economy, urban planning and land use and the permanent deputy commission on local government, cultural and information policy.

In 2013 he moved with his family from Yekaterinburg to Luxembourg. He returned to Russia at the end of 2014.

Since 2009 — a member of the Solidarnost movement. On April 10, 2010, he organized a rally against the construction of a temple on Labour Square in Yekaterinburg — the event gathered more than 3,500 participants and became the largest protest action in the city since perestroika. On October 24, 2010, he was one of the organizers of the rally in support of Yegor Bychkov.

He is a member of the central election committee of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council and was one of the leaders of Navalny’s 2013 mayoral campaign for Moscow. He was formerly a member of the political council of the People’s Freedom Party. From December 2016, Volkov was chief of staff to Alexei Navalny’s 2018 presidential campaign.

On 9 March 2023, Volkov stepped down as the chairman of the board of the Anti-Corruption Foundation after he had admitted to signing a letter on behalf of the Anti-Corruption Foundation in October which asked the European Union for sanctions on Mikhail Fridman to be dropped without consulting his associates. He was replaced with Maria Pevchikh.