Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is dead, the prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region where he had been serving his sentence said on Friday. He was 47.
In a statement published on its website, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said that Navalny “felt unwell” after a walk on Friday and “almost immediately lost consciousness.”
It said that medical staff had been called, but that they were unable to resuscitate Navalny. It said the reason of death was being established.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a procedural probe into the death.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been told about Navalny’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny confirmed Tuesday he was moved to a prison north of the Arctic Circle. He says on social media that he’s in excellent spirits despite a 20-day journey.
Navalny’s work to expose corrupt elites had a pocketbook appeal to the Russian people’s widespread sense of being cheated. Russia’s state-controlled television channels ignored Navalny, but his investigations of dubious contracts and officials’ luxurious lifestyles got wide attention through the back channels of YouTube videos and social media posts that often showed his sardonic sense of humour.
In 2013, he placed second in the race for Moscow mayor behind the candidate of Putin’s power-base United Russia party. That established him as a formidable force and a worry to the Kremlin.
Presidential run denied
Navalny intended to run for president in 2018 but was kept off the ballot because of his previous criminal convictions that his supporters said were politically motivated.
He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin — an accusation rejected by Russian officials. The next month, Navalny was ordered to serve two-and-a-half years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction.
His arrest and jailing sparked a wave of mass protests across Russia’s 11 time zones in what appeared to be a major challenge to the Kremlin. The authorities responded with mass arrests of demonstrators and criminal prosecutions of Navalny’s closest associates.
He has been sentenced in a series of other cases since, other cases since, including a 19-year sentence on extremism charges, and shuffled between prisons across the country.
The politician’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has since been banned by Russian authorities, deemed an extremist group.
Navalny is survived by his wife Yulia Navalnaya, an adult daughter and a teen son.
A 2022 documentary on his life, Navalny, was directed by Canadian Daniel Roher and won the Academy Award in its category.