Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison Friday, the Russian prison service announced.
Navalny, 47, was one of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics, and had been serving his extended prison sentence in an Arctic penal colony. Russia’s Federal Prison Service said in a statement Friday Navalny passed away after feeling uneasy 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,” the prison service for the Yamalo-Nenets region said on its website, according to NBC News.
“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,” the statement added.
An attorney for Navalny did not immediately confirm the news of his death, a spokesperson of his said Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Navalny’s chief of staff blamed Russian authorities for killing Navalny and said his attorney is on his way to the prison.
“Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexey Navalny in prison,” said Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff. “We do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn’t true,” he continued. “Navalny’s lawyer is on the way to Harp.”
The prominent Putin critic went missing in December following a serious health incident, his team said. Navalny’s supporters were not given access to a video feed to watch the court hearings inside the prison where Navalny was being held, his spokesperson said. His health was deteriorating prior to the health incident thanks to Russia’s brutal prison conditions.
“His death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the hear of the system Putin has built,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday. “Russia is responsible for this,” Blinken added.
Russian authorities sentenced Navalny to an extended 19 year prison term on extremism charges related to his anti-corruption activism, the Associated Press reported in September. The politically-motivated extremism charges were related to Navalny’s anti-corruption activism and were backdated to his January 2021 arrest.
Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in August 2020 and subsequently returned to Russia after recovering in Germany from the near-death incident. Russian authorities sentenced Navalny to a two-and-a-half years in prison for violating probation on sham embezzlement charges in the wake of his return. The Biden administration sanctioned senior Russian officials in March 2021 for poisoning and imprisoning Navalny.
Russian authorities extended Navalny’s prison sentence by nine years in March 2022 in the wake of Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and subsequent crackdown. The embezzlement charges against him were widely condemned for being politically motivated.
Navalny’s political ascendance, poisoning and struggles in prison were the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary by Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher.
“You all know that we cannot trust the Putin government. They lie constantly,” said Navalny’s widow Yulia at the Munich Security Conference.
“But if this is true, I want Putin and everyone around him, his friends and the government to know that they will be held accountable for what they did to our country, to my family and my husband.”
President Joe Biden addressed Navalny’s death in a speech delivered Friday afternoon. Biden placed the blame for his passing squarely on Putin.
“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden asserted. “Putin does not only target the citizens of other countries, as we’ve seen with what’s happening in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people,” he added.
The president celebrated Navalny’s opposition to Putin’s regime and pointed out Navalny’s courage in speaking out against the Russian strongman.
“As people in Russia and around the world are mourning Navalny today, because he was so many things that Putin was not. He was brave, he was principled, he was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed and it applied to everybody,” Biden said.
“He knew it was a cause worth fighting for, and obviously even dying for it.”
Biden urged the house to support more military aid to Ukraine and demurred when a reporter asked how the U.S. would respond to Navalny’s death.