Putin critic Alexei Navalny, 47, dies in Arctic prison

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most important opposition leader for the past decade, has died in an Arctic prison, prison authorities have announced.

One of President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics, he served 19 years in prison on extremism charges that were widely seen as politically motivated.

Late last year, Navalny was deported to one of Russia's toughest penal colonies.

His wife Yulia appealed to the international community to “work together to punish this regime.”

The prison in Russia's Yamalo-Nenets region, where Mr. Navalny is being held, said that Mr. Navalny “feeling unwell” after a walk on Friday.

The newspaper said in a statement that the man “lost consciousness almost immediately,” adding that emergency medical teams were immediately called and attempts were made to resuscitate him without success.

“Emergency doctors pronounced the prisoner dead. The cause of death is still being determined.”

Navalny, 47, was last seen the day before his death, smiling cheerfully during a court hearing via video link.

A tearful Yulia Navalnaya took to the stage at the Munich Security Conference, warning that the news came only from unreliable state intelligence sources.

“But I know that if that's true, President Putin, all of his allies, his friends, the entire government, will be held accountable for what they've done…and That day will come sooner than you think.”

His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was quoted as saying, “I don't want to hear any condolences. We met him in prison on the 12th.'' [February], In a meeting. He was alive, healthy, and happy. ”

Leonid Volkov, a close aide to Mr Navalny, warned there was no way to confirm what had happened, but said the prison authorities' statement amounted to a confession to killing Mr Navalny.

Reporting on Russia's state TV channels was minimal, but one report on RT suggested that Mr Navalny had suffered from a blood clot. But Alexander Polpan, a Moscow specialist who has treated Mr Navalny in the past, scoffed at this, saying such a diagnosis could only be made from a post-mortem examination.

Within minutes of prison authorities announcing Navalny's death, the international community praised the courage of President Vladimir Putin's biggest domestic opponent.

France said he paid with his life for resisting Russia's “tyranny,” while Norway's foreign minister said Russian authorities bore grave responsibility for his death.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Munich that if the reports are accurate, “his death in a Russian prison and the obsession and fear of a man reflect weakness and corruption at the heart of the system President Putin has built.” It just emphasizes that,” he said, adding: “Russia is responsible for this.”

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said only that Navalny's death had been “reported to the president” during a visit to Chelyabinsk. “Medical workers have to solve this somehow,” Peskov said.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said: “After what has just happened, no one should doubt the terrifying nature of Putin's regime in Russia.”

Most of the Russian president's critics have fled Russia, but Alexei Navalny returned home in January 2021 after months of treatment. In August 2020, he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok at the end of a trip to Siberia.

His team was able to fly him to Germany for specialist treatment, and upon his return to Moscow he was taken into custody. He was accompanied on the flight from Germany by his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who hugged her at passport control before she was taken away.

He never left prison again for the next 37 months.

In his last Instagram post to his wife two days ago, he wrote that even though there are thousands of miles between them, “you feel closer every second.” He leaves behind two children: Dasha, who is studying in the United States, and Zakhar, who is still in school.

Navalny, 47, had long sought to challenge Vladimir Putin at the polls but was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election. Next month, the Russian leader will not bow to any serious opposition.

Anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin has been banned from running for office after fraud was found in thousands of signatures submitted in support of his candidacy.

Navalny, who began his opposition in the form of an anti-corruption campaign, is the latest in a string of prominent Russian figures to die while challenging President Vladimir Putin's rule.

In 2015, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on a Moscow bridge just a stone's throw from the Kremlin, and Wagner leader Evgeny Prigozhin led a group of mercenaries in an armed revolt in August 2023. He died a few weeks later in an unknown plane crash.

But Navalny repeatedly laughed off his friends' health concerns. He was removed from a penal colony east of Moscow in December and was not seen for several weeks before reappearing in a penal colony in the Arctic town of Harup.

Navalny said he was forced to travel around Russia for 20 days and told reporters in court via video that his conditions were “much better” than in his former penal colony of Vladimir.

However, he was repeatedly punished with solitary confinement in prison. His spokeswoman Kira Yarmis said last month that he had spent more than 280 days in isolation.

Navalny was convicted of extremism last August and was not scheduled to leave prison until he was in his 70s. This was his third prison sentence, and his supporters accused the Kremlin of trying to permanently silence him.

Russian human rights activist and journalist Eva Melkacheva said on Friday that she had been placed in solitary confinement at least 27 times, which she said “could have had an impact” on his death.

In such extreme conditions, she said, under the law no one could be given isolation for more than 15 days, as doctors knew such punishment was extremely harmful to the human body.