ALEXEI Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition leader and a critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died after taking a walk at the Polar Wolf Arctic Penal Colony, as said by Russia’s prison service.
The Federal Penal Service in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region said that Navalny felt ill after going for a walk, and suddenly lost consciousness.
Prison officials said that medics and ambulance were called without delay, and that they carried out all the necessary resuscitation measures, but it did not yield positive results.
“All the necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, but they did not yield positive results. Paramedics confirmed the death of the convict [Alexei Navalny],” Federal Penal Service, in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region stated.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said that Putin has been informed of Navalny’s death.
The opposition leader’s lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, did not comment on the matter, but said that Navalny had held a meeting on Wednesday, and insisted that everything was normal at that time.
The cause of death is still uncertain, but Russian media outlets reported that Navalny had a blood clot.
Alexei Navalny became popular by writing columns against Putin. He also has a blog on what he claimed was vast corruption among Russia’s elite.
Navalny received major international attention after an alleged poisoning in Siberia, which led to a transfer to Germany.
At that time he claimed that Russia’s secret police poisoned him with a deadly soviet-era nerve agent called “Novichok”–and that Putin was behind it.
The 47-year-old was jailed in 2021 over a long-standing fraud case, and received 9 more years of prison sentence in early 2022.
In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to further 19 years behind bars after being found guilty on multiple extremism-related charges, including creating an extremist group, calling for extremist actions, financing extremist, uring minors into them, and for rehabilitating Nazi ideology.
Navalny had rejected the accusations and convictions against him, and said that they were politically motivated.