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. He was 47.
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.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a procedural probe into the death.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been told about Navalny’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
No notifications had been made to his relatives as required, Navalny’s deputy Ivan Zhdanov said on social media on Friday.
Alexei Navalny, a longtime opponent to President Vladimir Putin who was in a Russian prison in the Arctic has died, prison officials say.
Navalny’s work to expose corrupt elites had a pocketbook appeal to the Russian people’s widespread sense of being cheated. Russia’s state-controlled television channels ignored Navalny, but his investigations of dubious contracts and officials’ luxurious lifestyles got wide attention through the back channels of YouTube videos and social media posts that often showed his sardonic sense of humour.
In an interview in Moscow in 2011, Navalny was asked by Reuters if he was afraid of challenging Putin’s system.
“That’s the difference between me and you: you are afraid and I am not afraid,” he said. “I realize there is danger, but why should I be afraid?”
‘He made the ultimate sacrifice’
Condemnation quickly poured in from Western governments following the news of his death.
The European Union holds Russia responsible for the death of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, EU Council President Charles Michel said on Friday.
“Alexei Navalny fought for the values of freedom and democracy,” Michel said in a post on X.
“For his ideals, he made the ultimate sacrifice. The EU holds the Russian regime solely responsible for this tragic death.”
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny confirmed Tuesday he was moved to a prison north of the Arctic Circle. He says on social media that he’s in excellent spirits despite a 20-day journey.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he was “deeply saddened and disturbed” by the reports on the death of Navalny.
“We need to establish all the facts, and Russia needs to answer all the serious questions about the circumstances of his death,” Stoltenberg said.
There was also criticism from domestic figures. Russian newspaper editor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov told Reuters on Friday the death was “murder,” and that he believed harsh treatment had led to his demise.
Navalny’s death comes a month ahead of elections in which Putin faces no serious opposition. Thousands of Russians lined up across the country to sign papers in support of the candidacy of Boris Nadezhdin, a local legislator in a town near Moscow, but the main election authority later declared the vast majority of the signatures as invalid.
Nadezhdin called Navalny “one of the most talented and courageous people in Russia” on his Telegram channel.
Presidential run denied
In 2013, Navalny placed second in the race for Moscow mayor behind the candidate of Putin’s power-base United Russia party. That established him as a formidable force and a worry to the Kremlin.
He intended to run for president in 2018 but was kept off the ballot because of previous criminal convictions that his supporters said were politically motivated.
He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin — an accusation rejected by Russian officials. The next month, Navalny was ordered to serve two-and-a-half years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction.
His arrest and jailing sparked a wave of mass protests across Russia’s 11 time zones in what appeared to be a major challenge to the Kremlin. The authorities responded with mass arrests of demonstrators and criminal prosecutions of Navalny’s closest associates.
He has been sentenced in a series of other cases since, including a nine-year fraud sentence and a 19-year sentence on extremism charges, and shuffled between prisons and work camps across the country.
The politician’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has since been banned by Russian authorities, deemed an extremist group.
Navalny is survived by his wife Yulia Navalnaya, an adult daughter and a teen son.
A 2022 documentary on his life, Navalny, was directed by Canadian Daniel Roher and won the Academy Award in its category.
Latest sudden death
Putin has been president between 2000 and 2008 and again since 2012 after serving the interim period as prime minister. He pushed through changes to the constitution in 2020 that removed the obstacle of presidential term limits, which could see him remain as leader into the 2030s.
Navalny is the latest figure to oppose or clash with Putin who has died young.
KGB whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko died in his early 40s in London in 2006 after being poisoned. British and European court inquiries pointed to Russian involvement in his death.
In 2015, Russian politician Boris Nemtsov was assassinated on a Moscow bridge.
“It’s still the case that just as Russia treats its foreign policy, it treats its citizens. It has turned into a violent state that kills people who dream of a better future, like Nemtsov or now Navalny — imprisoned and tortured to death for standing up to Putin,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said on Friday.
Last year, longtime Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed at 62, along with nine other people, after an explosion on an airplane. Prigozhin, leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, had clashed with Putin over the direction of the Ukraine war and led a weekend rebellion in Russia weeks earlier.
