Charismatic anti-corruption activist and number one enemy of Vladimir Putin, Alexeï Navalny, 47, is dead, the Russian prison administration announced on Friday February 16.
What do we know about his death?
“On February 16, 2024, in penitentiary center number 3, prisoner A. Navalny felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness. The facility’s medical personnel arrived immediately and an emergency rescue team was called. All necessary resuscitation measures were taken, without results. Emergency workers noted the death of the condemned man, the causes of death are being established”, declared, in a press release, the Federal Service for the Execution of Sentences (FSIN) of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, in the Russian Far North. Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, was informed of this, according to his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.
Russian doctors tried to resuscitate the opponent for more than thirty minutes, according to a public hospital in the town of Labytnangi, located near the penal colony where Mr. Navalny was imprisoned. “The doctors who arrived on site continued the resuscitation operations that had already been carried out by the prison doctors. They chased them for more than thirty minutes. However the patient died”, said the health establishment.
The opponent’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaïa, visited the IK-3 penal colony in the Arctic region of Yamal on Saturday and a ” official document “ had been given to him confirming the death, said the opponent’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, in a message on X. “His death occurred on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. local [12 h 17 à Paris], according to the official document given to Alexei’s mother »she added.
Russian investigators told a lawyer for the opponent that the cause of his death has not been established. The deceased’s team accused the authorities of ” lie “ to preserve his remains, requested by his relatives. “It is obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks. That’s why they don’t hand over Alexei’s body and even hide it from his mother”she wrote on Telegram.
A lawyer for Alexeï Navalny who went to see the investigators “was informed (…) that a new histological examination was carried out”wrote Kira Yarmysh, on X. “The results should be known next week. It is obvious that they are lying and doing everything possible to avoid having to hand over the body.”she added.
The last images of the opponent date from Thursday, when he spoke by videoconference from his prison in Kharp, as part of the countless proceedings opposing him to the prison administration. They were published by the online media Sota. He is seen, apparently in good shape, joking with the judge at the court in Kovrov, Vladimir Oblast, that his bank account is empty and that the judge’s decisions are helping to empty it further. His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said she saw her son on February 12 in his penal colony and that he was then “in good health and in a cheerful mood”.
Why was he imprisoned?
Alexeï Navalny was serving a nineteen-year prison sentence for extremism. He was arrested in January 2021 upon his return to Russia after convalescence in Germany for a poisoning which he blamed on the Kremlin.
The 47-year-old activist disappeared at the beginning of December from the penal colony in Vladimir Oblast, 250 kilometers east of Moscow, where he had been detained until then. His relatives had not heard from him for several days, before the administration revealed his transfer to a remote penal colony in the far north of Russia. He was serving his sentence in very difficult conditions.
The last news of him had been given by the members of his team in exile during the past week. Alexei Navalny was released from prison on February 11, where he was sent for the twenty-sixth time of his detention, and returned to solitary confinement three days later, on February 14, without the reasons for this new punishment being given. .
During various hearings in trials in which he participated by videoconference in recent months, this tall blond with piercing blue eyes appeared thin and aged. He had suffered a series of health problems linked to a hunger strike and the poisoning he suffered in 2020, which he miraculously survived. His multiple trials had been widely denounced as political and a way of punishing him for his opposition to Vladimir Putin.
“Putin must be held accountable”: fear around the world
The international community immediately shared its astonishment after the news was broadcast. For the American president, Joe Biden, “Vladimir Putin is responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny”. For the head of British diplomacy, David Cameron, the Russian president “must be held accountable”. “Putin’s Russia fabricated charges against him, poisoned him, sent him to an Arctic penal colony and now he is tragically dead, also declared the former prime minister. Putin must be held accountable for what happened. »
An expression also used by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for whom “it is obvious to me that [M. Navalny] was killed like thousands of others who were tortured to death because of one person, Putin, who doesn’t care who dies as long as he maintains his position.” French President Emmanuel Macron said his ” anger “ and accused Russia of ” condemn to death “ THE “free spirits”, while the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, also stressed that Alexeï Navalny had “paid with his life for his resistance to a system of oppression”.
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The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, Russian Dmitri Mouratov, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta (banned in Russia in 2022), described as “murder” and of “scary news” the death of the political opponent. For Kremlin opponent and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Putin has “murdered slowly and publicly” Alexei Navalny after “failed to [le] kill quickly and secretly by having him poisoned. “Navalny was killed for exposing Putin and his mafia as the crooks and thieves they are,” he asserted.
Kremlin ally China declined to comment. “This is an internal Russian matter. I won’t comment on it.”declared a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in response to a question from a journalist from Agence France-Presse.