2024-02-16 11:48:13
Russian opposition leader and prominent Putin critic Alexei Navalny has died in prison, Russian authorities have announced.
“On February 16, 2024, in penal colony No. 3, the convict Alexei Navalny felt ill after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness,” the message said.
The Russian authorities’ statement also said that emergency teams were dispatched immediately.
“All the necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, but they did not give positive results. Doctors from the emergency medical service confirmed the death of the convict,” the statement concludes.
47-year-old Alexei Navalny is perhaps the most famous critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was born in a village west of Moscow.
His political activism, including extensive investigations into high-level corruption and his run for mayor of Moscow, earned him notoriety and many saw him as a threat to Putin’s rule.
In August 2020, his fight against the Russian president even made headlines in the world media.
Navalny fell seriously ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow and fell into a coma. His team accused the Kremlin of poisoning him, a charge the Russian government denies to this day.
The poisoned Navalny was taken to a hospital in Berlin, where medics confirmed that he had been poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. It took months to recover.
After recovering, Navalny chose to return to Russia, where he was later arrested, convicted on what he said were politically motivated charges, and remained in Russian prisons until his death.
The Kremlin commented that they do not know the cause of Navalny’s death.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the federal prison service was conducting all necessary checks in connection with his death.
Russian state media website TASS said that Vladimir Putin had been informed of his death.