The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been found dead, according to the nation’s prison service.
Navalny, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, was held in a high-security prison in Yamal near the Arctic Circle.
He was 47 years old.
“On February 16, 2024, in Penal Colony No. 3, the convict Alexei Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness, according to representatives of the department,” an official statement from the Yamal directorate of the federal penitentiary service said.
“The cause of death is being investigated,” the statement added.
The Federal Penitentiary Service for Yamal issued an updated statement that reads:
“On 16.02.24 in the correctional colony number three, convict Navalny felt ill after a walk almost immediately losing consciousness.
“Medical workers of the institution arrived immediately, ambulance team was called.
“All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out which did not give a positive result.
“Ambulance, doctors confirmed the death of the convict.
“The causes of death have been established.”
Navalny was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime.”
In a video from the prison in January, he had appeared gaunt with his head shaved.
In early December he had disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region, where he was serving a 30-year sentence on extremism and fraud charges.
He had called the charges political retribution for leading the anti-Kremlin opposition of the 2010s.
He did not expect to be released during Putin’s lifetime.
A former nationalist politician, Navalny helped foment the 2011-12 protests in Russia by campaigning against election fraud and government corruption, investigating Putin’s inner circle, and sharing the findings in slick videos that garnered hundreds of millions of views.
The high-water mark in his political career came in 2013 when he won 27% of the vote in a Moscow mayoral contest that few believed was free or fair.
He remained a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for years, identifying a palace built on the Black Sea for Putin’s personal use, mansions, and yachts used by the ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, and a sex worker who linked a top foreign policy official with a well-known oligarch.
In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning using novichok by Russia’s FSB security service and was evacuated to Germany for treatment.
He recovered and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on a parole violation charge and sentenced to his first of several jail terms that would total more than 30 years behind bars.
Putin has recently launched a presidential campaign for his fifth term in office.
He is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin and could surpass him if he runs again for office in 2030, a possibility since he had the constitutional rules on term limits rewritten in 2020.
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