- Prison service says the Putin critic collapsed and lost consciousness after a walk in a remote penal colony
MOSCOW: State media reported that Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who was jailed for 19 years on extremism charges, died in prison. His team did not confirm his death as of Friday. He was 47 years old.
According to media, Navalny died in prison after collapsing during a walk. He was in the IK-3 colony in Kharp, a remote and harsh place north of the Arctic Circle, where he was moved in December.
His spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said his lawyer was on his way to the colony, but she had little hope that Navalny was still alive.
The colony, also known as the “Polar Wolf”, was one of the toughest in Russia and had a history of housing serious offenders. It was near Vorkuta, a former Soviet gulag site.
The prison service said they tried to revive Navalny, but failed. They said they were investigating the cause of his death.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had been informed of Navalny’s death.
The Russian prosecutor’s office has warned Russians against participating in a mass protest in the centre of Moscow after news of the death was reported.
‘Paid for his courage with his life’
Navalny aide Leonid Volkov posted on X: “Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexei Navalny in prison. We do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn’t true.”
Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny’s mother, was quoted by Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta as saying that her son had been “alive, healthy and happy” when she last saw him on February 12.
Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who held a press conference at the Munich Security Summit attended by global leaders and officials, said that Putin and his associates should not go unpunished if the news of her husband’s death was confirmed.
She called on the international community to come together and fight against the “horrific regime” in Moscow.
Many world leaders put out statements saying Navalny “paid for his courage with his life” and that they hold Russia responsible for his imprisonment and death for standing up to Putin.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted to the news and said it was “obvious” that Navalny had been killed by Putin.
“Like thousands of others who have been tortured,” he said, adding that this demonstrates why the Russian leader must be made to “lose everything and held accountable for his actions”.
President Joe Biden expressed his reaction to Navalny’s death, stating that he was “outraged” though “not surprised”. He praised Navalny’s courage in confronting corruption and violence within the Putin government, holding Putin responsible for Navalny’s demise.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed these sentiments, highlighting Navalny’s death as indicative of the underlying flaws within Putin’s regime. He emphasized Russia’s accountability in this matter.
A spokesperson aboard Air Force One later informed reporters that the White House is urging an investigation into Navalny’s death.
However, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, criticised the West for already arriving at “conclusions” without forensic evidence. She said on Telegram that the immediate reactions “in the form of direct accusations against Russia are self-revealing”.
Statements by Western leaders about Navalny’s death are unacceptable and “absolutely rabid”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said, according to Interfax news agency.
Life sentence
Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova said that Russia’s prison service reported Navalny’s death in colony number 3 which is “a very, very harsh prison”, adding that “his health has been pretty bad lately”.
The official cause of death has not been announced and an investigation is under way, Shapovalova reported.
Navalny, a fierce critic of Putin, has been imprisoned since January 2021 when he returned to Moscow after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
His death less than a month before Russia holds elections that will give Putin another six years in power drew renewed criticism of the leader who has cracked down on all opposition at home.
Before Navalny was arrested, he led campaigns against corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Navalny strongly condemned the war in social media posts from prison and during his court appearances.
Less than a month after the start of the war, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court in a case he and his supporters rejected as fabricated. The investigators immediately launched a new investigation and in August 2023, Navalny was convicted on charges of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
After the verdict, Navalny said he understood that he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime”.
