Putin critic Alexei Navalny dead, says Russia’s prison service

London: US President Joe Biden has led the world’s condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin following reports his jailed political rival has died in an Arctic penal colony.

Alexei Navalny, 47, a fierce anti-corruption campaigner who galvanised the country’s political opposition, collapsed after a walk at his prison on Friday after which, prison services said, he lost consciousness and couldn’t be revived.

Alexei Navalny has died in jail.Credit: Russian Federal Penitentiary service

Biden said he was both “not surprised and outraged at the news”, adding the 47-year-old had bravely fought the regime during Russia’s slow descent into authoritarianism under Putin.

“Even in prison, he was a powerful voice for the truth,” Biden said. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. What has happened to Navalny is more proof of Putin’s brutality.”

In an unplanned appearance at the Munich Security Conference, Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya said that Putin would “bear responsibility” for what he had done.

Navalny, by far Russia’s most famous opposition leader, rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning the elite class around Putin and voicing allegations of corruption on a vast scale.

US President Joe Biden speaks on the death of Alexey Navalny, Russian opposition leader, in the White House.Credit: Bloomberg

Navalnaya said while she was awaiting proof of her husband’s death, she could not trust Putin or his government, adding: “They always lie.”

“If it’s true, I want Putin, his whole entourage, Putin’s friends and his government to know they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, my family, and my husband. And that day will come very soon,” Navalnaya said.

“I want to call on the whole world community [ . . . ] to get together and defeat this evil, this horrific regime we have in Russia right now. This regime and Vladimir Putin should be held personally responsible for all the horrible things they have been doing to my country, Russia, in recent years.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese shared his sadness describing Navalny as a ” courageous force for democracy in Russia”.

“His treatment was unforgivable, and our thoughts are with his family and with the people of Russia,” Mr Albanese said.

Russia’s presidential elections are set for March, with Putin’s increased crackdown on political dissent likely to eliminate protests of a rigged election to return him to power until 2030.

Navalny was arrested in January 2021 after returning to Moscow from Berlin, where he had spent months recovering from a near-fatal poisoning that he said was ordered by Putin.

Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Russian Alexei Navalny, speaks during the Munich Security Conference.Credit: AP

Western leaders were quick to suggest that Navalny’s death was caused by the Russian government, with Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron saying Putin should be accountable for what had happened.

“No one should doubt the dreadful nature of his regime,” he said. “Putin’s Russia fabricated charges against him, poisoned him, sent him to an arctic penal colony and now he has tragically died.”

Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said that if reports of the death were accurate, they “only underscore Russia’s weakness and rot”.

European Council president Charles Michel said Navalny “made the ultimate sacrifice” and that “the EU holds the Russian regime solely responsible for this tragic death”, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his death was a “terrible” sign of how Russia had changed.

Putin, who appeared on state television on Friday morning talking to students and workers at a factory in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural mountains, has yet to comment, although his spokesman said he had been informed.

Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, lambasted the international outcry.

“The immediate reaction of the leaders of Nato countries to the death of Navalny in the form of accusations towards Russia is self-incriminating,” she said.

“There are no medical test results yet, and the West is already making conclusions.”

The prison in the town of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Russia, some 1900km from Moscow.Credit: AP

Serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism, he was moved in December from his former prison in the Vladimir region of central Russia to a “special regime” penal colony – the highest security level of prisons in Russia – above the Arctic Circle.

His allies decried the transfer to a colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1900 kilometres north-east of Moscow in yet another attempt to force Navalny into silence. The remote region is notorious for long and severe winters. Kharp is about 100 kilometres from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were part of the Soviet gulag prison-camp system.

Following reports of his death Navalny’s exiled team of supporters said they had “no confirmation of this for now”, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh wrote on social media site X. She said a lawyer for Navalny was travelling to the remote prison colony where he was transferred last year.

“We have no grounds to believe state propaganda,” Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, wrote on X. “If it’s true, then it’s not ‘Navalny died,’ but ‘Putin killed Navalny,’ nothing else. But I don’t believe them for a second.”

Alexei Navalny was arguably Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic.Credit: AP

Navalny’s lawyer was travelling to the prison, Volkov added.

Leonid Sobolev, a member of Navalny’s legal team, told independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta that the activist last saw a lawyer on Wednesday. “Everything was fine then,” Sobolev said.

Navalny had continued to exchange regular messages with supporters through letters despite his sentence and he continued to regularly speak out against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin had attempted to cut Navalny off even further by arresting several of his lawyers last year on charges of being part of an “extremist group,” which carry a sentence of up to six years in prison.

It also repeatedly punished him by holding him in solitary confinement on 27 separate occasions, most recently from Wednesday.

Navalny this week had posted on social media a message to his wife, Yulia: “Baby, I know that everything with you is like in the song – there are cities between us, airport landing lights, blue snowstorms and thousands of kilometres. But I feel you by my side every second and I love you all the more.”

Navalny’s popularity increased after the leading charismatic politician, Boris Nemtsov, was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.

Whenever Putin spoke about Navalny, he made it a point to never mention the activist by name, referring to him as “that person” or similar wording, in an apparent effort to diminish his importance.

Bill Browder, an American-born British financier and Putin critic, said it was likely the Kremlin would attempt to cover up the circumstances of Navalny’s death.

“Navalny was fine yesterday,” Browder, who led the Magnitsky global sanctions campaign against Russian official told The Times. “We should expect a full Magnitsky-style cover-up from the Russian government in short order.

“I can almost predict the language they will use – ‘natural causes’, ‘no sign of violence’, ‘unexpected death’ etc.”

With agencies

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