Supporters of Navalny say they could not confirm he was dead, but that if he was then they believed he had been killed
\nNews Agency
\nMoscow
\nAlexei Navalny, Russia\u2019s most famous opposition leader, died on Friday after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.
\nNavalny, 47, rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning President Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite whom he accused of vast corruption, avarice and opulence.
\nThe Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said in a statement that Navalny \u201cfelt unwell\u201d after a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) north east of Moscow.
\nHe lost consciousness almost immediately, it said.
\n\u201cAll necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not yield positive results. Doctors of the ambulance stated the death of the convict,\u201d the prison service said, adding that causes of death were being established.
\nPutin has been told about Navalny\u2019s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Putin, who is running for re-election in a month, was shown on a television clip visiting a factory in the Urals.
\nSupporters of Navalny said they could not confirm he was dead, but that if he was then they believed he had been killed.
\n\u201cRussian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexei Navalny in prison,\u201d Navalny aide Leonid Volkov wrote on social media. \u201cWe do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn\u2019t true.\u201d
\nCondemnation quickly poured in from Western governments.
\n\u201cDreadful news about Alexei Navalny… If the report about his death in Russian prison is true it represents another terrible crime by Putin\u2019s regime,\u201d Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said on X.
\n\u201cThe ruthlessness against Navalny shows again why it is necessary to continue to fight against authoritarianism.\u201d
\nDeath in jail
\nNavalny\u2019s lawyer was on his way to the \u201cPolar Wolf\u201d prison in Kharp where Navalny died. Russian state television showed a press conference by the central bank.
\nRussian newspaper editor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov told Reuters on Friday the death of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny was \u201cmurder\u201d, and said that he believed harsh treatment had led to his demise.
\n\u201cMy sincere belief is that it was the conditions of detention that led to Navalny\u2019s death … His sentence was supplemented by murder,\u201d Muratov said, offering condolences to his family.
\nNavalny earned admiration from Russia\u2019s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
\nNavalny said at the time that he was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020. The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he was poisoned with a nerve agent.
\nIn an interview in Moscow in 2011, Navalny was asked by Reuters if he was afraid of challenging Putin\u2019s system.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the difference between me and you: you are afraid and I am not afraid,\u201d he said. \u201cI realize there is danger, but why should I be afraid?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Supporters of Navalny say they could not confirm he was dead, but that if he was then they believed he had been killed News Agency Moscow Alexei Navalny, Russia\u2019s most famous opposition leader, died on Friday after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-387573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n