Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison. TASR informs about it based on the Friday report of the AFP agency, referring to the Russian media. “On February 16, 2024, the convict AA Navalny felt nauseous after a walk in correctional colony number 3 and almost immediately lost consciousness,” Sky News quoted the statement of the Russian prison service as saying. “Medics of the institute arrived immediately on the scene and paramedics were also called. All necessary resuscitation measures were performed, but without positive results. Rescuers declared the convict dead. The causes of death are being investigated,” the prison service said.
The Russian state agency TASS wrote that President Vladimir Putin had already been informed of Navalny’s death. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the prison service is conducting all necessary checks regarding Navalny’s death. Peskov said he did not know the details of the case.
The head of Navalny team, Leonid Volkov, announced that he has no official information about the death yet. However, according to him, the statement of the prison service can be interpreted as an admission that Navalny was killed on purpose.
At the same time, his lawyer traveled to the facility where Navalny was imprisoned. “As soon as we find out anything, we will inform about it,” said Naval Team member Kira Jarmyšová.
Forty-seven-year-old Navalny was the most prominent representative of the Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin. He was detained in January 2021 after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from nerve agent poisoning. He accused the Kremlin of the poisoning attempt, which denied it.
After his arrest, Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating his probation. Several criminal proceedings were launched against him.
At the beginning of December last year, he disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. After a grueling 20-day transfer, he called from the penal colony in the village of Charp, beyond the Arctic Circle, saying that he was fine. In Charpa, he was to serve a 19-year sentence in a special regime for creating an extremist group, financing extremist activities and other crimes. This sentence was imposed on him in August 2023. Until then, he was already serving an 11-and-a-half-year sentence in a maximum-security facility for fraud and other charges that the convict himself denied.
Supporters of Navalny claimed that his arrest, prosecution and conviction were a politically motivated attempt to suppress criticism of President Putin and eliminate his biggest rival at the same time.
Eugene Korda’s comment:
Alexei Navalny was a leading critic of Putin’s Russia. After he was poisoned by the Russian secret service and saved at the last minute by German doctors, he refused Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offer to stay in Germany and returned to Russia to fight against the dictatorial regime. Putin ordered him imprisoned and it was only a matter of time before this man could not stand the inhumane conditions his captors had prepared for him. President Putin is clearly responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny. A brave man died. The editors of the weekly express their deepest condolences to his family.
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