Long-time Putin critic and political rival Alexei Navalny was found dead under mysterious circumstances yesterday-- yet another in a long line of Putin critics murdered or killed unexpectedly (more on that tomorrow).
Navalny was being held in one of Russia's harshest prisons on a 19-year jail term, which was widely viewed as politically motivated. In an unexpected move, Navalny was moved to the arctic penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets district in December.
Just a few days before his untimely killing, Navalny posted on social media: "The Yamal colony decided to break the Vladimir record of fawning and pleasing the Moscow authorities. They just gave me 15 days in a punishment cell. That is, this is the 4th punishment cell in less than 2 months that I have been with them."
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on social media that his death had occurred shortly after 2 p.m. local time on Friday, citing an official statement given to his mother by the authorities. Russian authorities said Navalny collapsed after a walk at the prison colony on Friday, lost consciousness and couldn’t be revived. They said the cause of death is still being established. The consensus of the international community is that Putin had him murdered.
Navalny’s lawyer and his mother, Lyudmila, were told at the prison on Saturday that the activist had died of “sudden death syndrome,” according to a post on X by Ivan Zhdanov, a close aide to Navalny. “We are convinced that Alexei was killed yesterday and the order to do this was given personally by Putin,” Yarmysh wrote.
Yarmysh said an employee of the IK-3 prison colony in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Russia where Navalny was incarcerated, told Navalny’s mother that the body had been transferred to Salekhard by state investigators carrying out an examination. But when his lawyer and mother arrived at the morgue after flying to Salekhard, they found it closed and were told that the body wasn’t there, Yarmysh said. “We demand that Alexei Navalny’s body be immediately handed over to his family,” she wrote on social media.
Navalny, who was 47 and had been in jail since 2021, was serving three prison sentences amounting to more than 30 years on charges he and his supporters said were fabricated. He was detained after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from what German doctors said was poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok. It is widely accepted that the poisoning was carried out the Russian state-- most likely on the orders of Putin.
The foreign minister of the Group of Seven countries issued a statement expressing “outrage” and demanding that Moscow clarify the circumstances of his death. Navalny had spent much of his three years behind bars in isolation chambers and deliberately deprived of sleep. Russia’s embattled opposition, who now lives in exile, said the death of a man who for years was Putin’s biggest critic and political rival marks the effective end of a period in Russian politics where some forms of dissent were still tolerated by the state.
After his death was announced, makeshift memorials emerged and rallies commemorating Navalny’s life were held in several countries. In Russia, where street protests are swiftly and often violently suppressed by the state, Navalny supporters gathered in the squares of some cities to lay flowers in his honor in silence. More than 100 people were detained at such ceremonies across Russia that day.
Some people in Moscow brought flowers for Navalny to a memorial dedicated to another opposition politician and vocal President Vladimir Putin critic, Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered on a bridge overlooking the Kremlin in February 2015. The group overseeing the memorial posted footage of two men in civilian clothing stuffing the flowers into a trash bag and hauling them away.
“After the assassination of Navalny, it would be absurd to see Putin as
the legitimate leader of the Russian state, he is a thug who holds power
through corruption and violence,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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