Posted on 02/16/24
| News Source: WSJ
Russia’s Alexei Navalny, a fierce anticorruption campaigner who galvanized the country’s political opposition, has died in prison, Russian news agencies reported Friday.
The cause of his death was still being established, said prison authorities, cited by Russian news agency TASS.
Navalny had been serving sentences in a penal colony amounting to more than 30 years on various charges. He was 47 years old.
A statement from the prison authorities said that he had felt unwell following a walk outside and lost consciousness. The statement said a medical team was called on site but was unable to save him.
Navalny had been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Russia from Germany, where he was recovering after falling ill during a flight inside Russia. German doctors concluded that he had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok. Navalny blamed his poisoning on the Kremlin, which denied involvement in any attempt to harm him.
A fierce orator and smart strategist, Navalny for years worked to weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power, including by attempting to undermine the pro-Kremlin United Russia party at local, regional and national elections.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, without elaborating, that the country’s prison authorities were working to establish how Navalny died.
Navalny’s team, which lives in exile, didn’t immediately confirm his death. The politician was moved in December to an Arctic prison so remote that his aides have had very limited contact with him. Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said in a post on X on Friday that a lawyer is en route to Navalny’s prison to confirm the news, which his team learned from the Russian prison service.