Report: Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny dies in Russian prison

Russia’s prison service announced Friday that imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died, The Associated Press reported.

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Navalny, 47, and one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most visible critics, was serving a 19-year sentence in an Arctic penal colony, considered one of the world’s toughest jails.

Navalny’s spokeswoman said on social media that his team could not immediately confirm his death.

“We don’t have any confirmation of this yet,” Kira Yarmysh said, adding that a lawyer was traveling to the remote town where the prison is. “As soon as we have any information, we will report it.”

According to prison authorities, Navalny fell ill after a walk.

“On February 16, 2024, in penal colony No. 3, convict A.A. Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness,” news agency Interfax reported, citing the country’s prison service.

“The facility’s medical workers immediately arrived at the scene and an emergency medical team was called in. All necessary resuscitation measures have been carried out, but they did not yield positive results. Emergency medics confirmed the death of the convict,” it added.

Navalny’s lawyer Leonid Solovyov told Russian media he would not be commenting yet, BBC News reported.

According to The Guardian, a video from the prison in January showed Navalny gaunt with his head shaved.

Navalny, who rose to prominence in Russia more than a decade ago, was known for his oratory skills and his campaign to spread his view of what he called the “wonderful Russia of tomorrow.”

He used his social media presence to reach out to Russia’s more democratically minded teens and to expose and lampoon Russian government corruption.

He campaigned against official corruption, organized major anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office, the AP reported.

Opposing Putin made Navalny a marked man in Russia, and he nearly died in August 2020 when he was attacked with a Novichok nerve agent in Siberia, the AP reported.

It was one of several times he was attacked.

After an assailant threw green-hued disinfectant in his face in 2017, seriously damaging one of his eyes, Navalny joked that people were calling him “The Hulk” after the comic book hero who turns into a green monster when he gets angry.

While serving a jail sentence in 2019 for involvement in an election protest, he was taken to the hospital for what prison authorities said was an allergic reaction, but some doctors said appeared to be poisoning, according to the AP.

On Aug. 20, 2020, he became severely ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was organizing opposition candidates. According to the BBC, he collapsed in the aisle, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he spent two days in a hospital while supporters begged doctors to allow him to be taken to Germany for treatment.

He was flown to Germany, where his recovery took months, and returned to Moscow on Jan. 17, 2021. He was immediately detained.

“I know that I’m right. I fear nothing,” Navalny told supporters and the media upon landing, just minutes before he was detained. “Have you been waiting for me long?” he asked border guards. His supporters staged mass protests across Russia calling for his release.

He had since received three prison sentences.

He was born in 1976 in Bytyn, a small town near Moscow. He was educated as a lawyer and economist, but entered politics in 2008, starting his anti-corruption fund, FBK, three years later, according to NBC News.

Navalny tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was barred from entering the race because of a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny said the charge was made up to keep him out of politics.

After Navalny’s arrest in January, his team published the “Putin’s palace” video on YouTube which focused on a vast luxury Black Sea palace, allegedly gifted to Putin by Russian oligarchs.

The video has been viewed more than 100 million times. Putin called it “boring,” denying the claims, the BBC reported.

The Kremlin, who has made a point of not referring to Navalny by name to avoid raising his profile in public, said it had no information on the cause of death.

The New York Times reported that Putin has been made aware of Navalny’s death.

The last social media post on Navalny’s social media account on X, formerly Twitter, was a love letter to his wife on Valentine’s Day.

The post reads: “Baby, everything is like in a song with you: between us there are cities, the take-off lights of airfields, blue snowstorms and thousands of kilometers. But I feel that you are near every second, and I love you more and more.”

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