MOSCOW (Reuters) -Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is dead, the prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region where he had been serving his sentence said on Friday.
In a statement published on its website, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said that Navalny "felt unwell" after a walk on Friday, and "almost immediately lost consciousness".
It said that medical staff had been called, but that they were unable to resuscitate Navalny. It said the reason of death was being established.
Yulia Navalny gets a standing ovation at the Munich Security Conference, hours after being told her husband is dead. Via translator: “I thought, ‘Should I stand here before you or should I go back to my children?’ Then I thought, ‘What would would have Alexei done in my place?’” pic.twitter.com/wpv2q80bJo
"I would like Putin and his staff, everybody around him, his government, his friends...they will be punished for what they have done with country, with my family and with my husband. They will be brought to justice and this day will come soon." Yulia Navalny, Munich Security Conference
Navalny was forty-seven years old.
His death coincides with Donald Trump advocating for Putin to attack Western Europe and do whatever he wants to them and Mike Johnson’s promise to kill Ukraine funding.
President Biden imposed sanctions on Russia over the poisoning of Navalny in 2023. I suspect the White House will not let Putin get away with this without serious ramifications.
When Putin was asked if he’d tried to have Navalny killed, he smirked, saying: “If there was such a desire, it would have been done.”
Putin's fierce opposition leader, Navalny, was serving a nineteen-year sentence for “extremism.” In December, he was moved from a prison in the Vladimir region of Russia to a “special regime” prison in a penal colony above Siberia's bitterly cold Arctic Circle. The move was an attempt to silence Navalny; the Gulag is 1200 miles from Moscow and is located in the town of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region.
The indigenous people residing in the Yamalo-Nenets region in the Siberian tundra.
He made no secret of his opposition to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. His death should be no surprise as Putin had attempted to murder him on a couple of occasions—the most recent in 2020 by a nerve agent.
In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised in serious condition after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.[23] He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later.[24] Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service.[25][26][27] In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while he was hospitalised in Germany which were imposed as a result of his 2014 conviction.[28][29][30] Following his arrest and the release of the documentary Putin's Palace, which accused Putin of corruption, mass protests were held across Russia.[31] In February 2021, his suspended sentence was replaced with a prison sentence of over two and a half years' detention,[32][33][34] and his organisations were later designated as extremist and liquidated, including the FBK. In March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial described as a sham by Amnesty International;[35][36] his appeal was rejected and in June, he was transferred to a high-security prison.[37] In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison on extremism charges[38] meaning he would be released in December 2038.[39] Navalny commented that his sentence is as long as either his life or the life of the political regime in the country.[40] In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks, and then re-emerged in a new prison in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.[41][42]
🚨During a court appearance yesterday, Navalny appeared to be in good condition, communicating through a video link from his penal colony. pic.twitter.com/5h1HS9lTbX
As he recovered in Berlin from the August 2020 assassination attempt, Navalny and his crack research team – acting on some creative sleuthing by investigative outfit Bellingcat and CNN – figured out who his would-be killers were and discovered they’d been tailing him on Putin’s orders for over three years.
So detailed was Navalny’s knowledge that, posing as an official with Russia’s National Security Council, he was able to call one of the would-be killers, who promptly confessed to lacing Navalny’s underwear with the banned nerve agent Novichok.
The security service agent, one of a large team from the feared FSB, the Soviet KGB’s modern replacement, even offered a critique of their failed murder bid. He told Navalny he’d survived only because the plane carrying him diverted for medical help when he became sick, and suggested that the assassination attempt might have succeeded on a longer flight.
When challenged face-to-face at the door of his Moscow apartment by CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who along with journalists from Der Spiegel and The Insider had also helped in the investigation, the agent swiftly shut himself inside. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attempt on Navalny’s life.
Obviously, he was killed by Putin - Zelensky reacted to Navalny's death. It just became known that Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison. Obviously, he was killed by Putin, like thousands of other tortured people, tortured because of this one being. Putin doesn't care who… pic.twitter.com/Sx3H3bPm1X
