Report: Alexei Navalny, a Vocal Putin Critic, Dies in Prison

Report: Alexei Navalny, a Vocal Putin Critic, Dies in Prison

Russian authorities said famous Putin critic Alexei Navalny died on Friday:

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most famous opposition leader, died on Friday after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.

Navalny, 47, rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning President Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite whom he accused of vast corruption, avarice and opulence.

Authorities placed Navalny in the IK-3 penal colony known as “Polar Wolf,” located in Kharp, which is above the Arctic Circle:

Navalny, who was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism, felt unwell after a walk, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, and lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived to try to revive him, but he died. It said the cause of death was “being established.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was informed of Navalny’s death and the prison service would look into it in line with standard procedures.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the politician’s team had no confirmation of his death so far and that his lawyer was traveling to the town where he was held.

Navalny went to prison in 2021 when he returned from Germany after recovering from a nerve agent poisoning. He blamed Putin and his cronies for the poisoning:

A year later, on Aug. 20, 2020, he became severely ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was organizing opposition candidates. He collapsed in the aisle while returning from the bathroom, and the plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where he spent two days in a hospital while supporters begged doctors to allow him to be taken to Germany for treatment.

Once in Germany, doctors determined he had been poisoned with a strain of Novichok – similar to the nerve agent that nearly killed former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018 and resulted in the death of another woman.

Navalny was in a medically induced coma for about two weeks, then labored to recover speech and movement for several more weeks. His first communication while recovering showed his defiant wit — an Instagram post saying that breathing on one’s own is “a remarkable process that is underestimated by many. Strongly recommended.”

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