Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has died in an Arctic penal colony, according to the country’s prison service, triggering condemnation from western leaders who blamed President Vladimir Putin for his demise. Putin’s most prominent opponent, Navalny fell ill after a walk in the prison’s yard and “lost consciousness almost immediately”, the Russian prison service said on Friday, adding that attempts to resuscitate the 47-year-old failed and “the reasons for his death are being clarified”.
US President Joe Biden was among the western leaders who were quick to suggest Navalny’s death was caused by the Russian government. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said. “Putin is responsible. What has happened to Navalny is more proof of Putin’s brutality.” Emmanuel Macron, president of France, said: “In today’s Russia, free spirits are sent to the gulag and condemned to death. Anger and indignation . . . My thoughts go out to his family, loved ones and to the Russian people.”
A charismatic anti-corruption activist, Navalny was jailed just over three years ago after returning to Russia from Germany following treatment for a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on Putin. The Kremlin then steadily moved to isolate him from the outside world by holding him under increasingly restrictive conditions in notoriously harsh and remote prison colonies. In December, he was relocated to a jail in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Russia, above the Arctic Circle, after disappearing from public view and falling out of contact with his legal team for several weeks.
Navalny’s exiled team of supporters on Friday said it had “no confirmation” of the activist’s death, adding that a lawyer for Navalny was travelling to the prison.
Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya gave an unannounced speech at the Munich Security Conference, saying: “If this is true, I want Putin and all of his entourage, Putin’s friends and his government to know they will be held accountable for what they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband. And that day will come very soon.”
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said: “His death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built. Russia is responsible for this.”
Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, responded angrily, calling western leaders’ remarks “absolutely outrageous and absolutely unacceptable”.
In Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities across Russia, small groups of Russians braved strict anti-protest laws and laid flowers at makeshift memorials to Navalny. More than 100 people were arrested, according to OVD-Info, a Russian rights group that tracks political arrests and offers legal aid.
