2024-02-20 10:47:16
The death of Alexei Navalny was announced by the authorities of the prisons where he was held in Russia.
“On February 16, 2024, in the prison center No. 3, the prisoner Navalny A. A. felt unwell after a walk (…) the causes of his death are under investigation,” the announcement of the Russian prison services states.
For its part, the Kremlin declares ignorance about the causes of his death. Specifically, as reported by the state news agency TASS, Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed of the death of Alexei Navalny. While Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no information on the matter and that the Russian prison authorities were carrying out all the necessary checks.
Fierce critic
The 47-year-old was considered one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics.
Navalny had been jailed until the age of 74 on charges of extremism and fraud – charges he has dismissed as false and fabricated to keep him out of the political arena.
At the end of last year, he was transferred to the Arctic Penitentiary, one of the country’s toughest prisons, where he would serve his 19-year sentence “in a special regime”.
One of the last videos, last January, where he appeared fat and with a shaved head, caused a sensation.
Last December he failed to appear at several scheduled court hearings, with his legal team reporting he had been missing for 17 days. “Navalni has never been in hiding for such a long time,” his lawyers said in a Telegram post.
After submitting 680 requests to locate him, on December 25 they announced that Navalny had been “found” more than 1,000 miles away, at the “Polar Wolf” penitentiary in the Arctic.
According to Russian media, he last appeared yesterday, during a hearing by video call.
Revelations and “extremism”
The former nationalist politician had helped instigate the 2011-12 protests in Russia, leading a campaign against government corruption and election fraud. In this context, he had made revelations about the Russian president and the people in his inner circle. Among the revelations that received millions of views on social media were the Black Sea mansion built for Putin’s personal use and the luxury yacht and residences used by former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The peak of his political career came in 2013, when he won 27% of the vote in the Moscow municipal elections.
In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma and was taken to Germany for treatment. As was later announced by the German government, traces of the nerve agent Novichok had been detected in blood samples of the opposition leader.
After being discharged from the German hospital, Navalny returned to Moscow in January 2021, when he was arrested again for violating his probation.
Despite his health condition, Russian justice ruled that he should have complied with the terms of his suspension.
Navalny’s death comes amid Vladimir Putin’s new campaign for a fifth term.
Kira Jarmis, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said she had no confirmation of his death, adding that his lawyers were on a flight to Siberia.
“The Federal Penitentiary Service in the Yamalo-Nenets Region is spreading the news about the death of Alexei Navalny in IK-3. We still don’t have any confirmation about this,” she writes in X.
“Russia responsible for Navalny’s death”
The European Union holds Russia responsible for the death of Navalny, announced the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Navalny paid with his life for his opposition to Putin, the French foreign minister estimated through X. “His death in prison reminds us of the reality of Vladimir Putin’s regime,” added Stéphane Cezournet.
Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Bart Eide wrote to X that “the Russian government bears heavy responsibility” for Navalny’s death, while Latvia’s president said Navalny was “brutally murdered by the Kremlin.”
“Whatever one thinks of Alexei Navalny as a politician, he was just brutally murdered by the Kremlin. This is a fact and this is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime. My condolences to the family and friends,” wrote Edgars Rinkevic.
Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov told Reuters today that the jailed opposition leader’s death was “murder”, adding that the conditions of his detention led to his death.
“The West has decided”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said today that what she called Western accusations about Navalny’s death are “revelatory for the West itself.”
In her statement, which she made public through the Telegram platform, Zakharova says that the forensic results for Navalny’s death are not yet available, but the West has already reached its own conclusions.
Zakharova did not specify which charges she is referring to.
Source: BBC/Guardian/Reuters