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Russia’s official press has confirmed that Alexei Navalny, the country’s best-known dissident and a caustic critic of President Vladimir Putin, died while serving a sentence at a Siberian penal colony.
The official Tass news service confirmed on Friday that Mr. Navalny, 47, had died and that Mr. Putin had been informed of his death.
The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, known as the FSIN, said in a statement that Mr. Navalny had fallen ill while taking a walk and efforts to resuscitate him had failed. The cause of the death has not been determined and prison officials claimed that Navalny had “no health complaints and there were no medical requests made by his relatives before the incident,” according to the Tass report.
Mr. Navalny had reportedly been ill in recent months and was still dealing with the lingering effects of a suspected nerve agent while campaigning against Mr. Putin in August 2020, an attack widely believed to have been ordered by the Kremlin.
The official Russian RT news network said Mr. Navalny lost consciousness after a walk and efforts to resuscitate him failed. RT said he had a blood clot at the time of death.
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Before his imprisonment starting in 2021 on what supporters called trumped-up charges of fraud and campaign law violations, Mr. Navalny had been an opposition leader and prominent anti-corruption campaigner. Many of his well-researched reports and videos focused on excessive spending and the lavish lifestyles of Mr. Putin and his close associates.
He received three prison sentences totaling 19 years in jail, all of which he rejected as politically motivated.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow that prison officials were doing their “due diligence” regarding the death, while the Russian Investigative Committee is also looking into the incident.
“There is a certain set of rules which everyone is being guided by,” Mr. Peskov said.
But Mr. Navalny’s mother raised questions about the death in a Facebook post Friday morning, saying her son was “alive, healthy and happy” when she last saw him earlier in the week.”
“I don’t want to hear any condolences,” Lyudmila Navalnaya wrote.
SEE ALSO: NATO’s Stoltenberg: Russia must answer questions about death of jailed Putin critic
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he was “saddened and concerned” about the death of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny and called on the Kremlin to conduct a full investigation into what happened.
Speaking before the Munich Security Conference on Friday, the NATO chief called Mr. Navalny “a strong voice for freedom [and] for democracy” and said the Russian government “has serious questions to answer.”
“It is important to have all the facts established (but) what we have seen is that Russia has become a more and more authoritarian power,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “They have used oppression against the opposition for many years.”
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, in an interview Friday morning on NPR, said the Biden administration was still trying to determine what had happened.
But he added, “If it’s confirmed, it’s a terrible tragedy.”
Tributes to Mr. Navalny poured in from world leaders from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with harsh criticism for the Putin regime’s treatment of its best-known critic.
“Alexei Navalny fought for the values of freedom and democracy,” European Union Council President Charles Michel said in a social media posting. “For his ideals, he made the ultimate sacrifice. The EU holds the Russian regime solely responsible for this tragic death.”
Mr. Navalny was just the latest in a string of high-profile critics of Mr. Putin who died in grim or suspicious circumstances after running afoul of the Kremlin
Others on the list include Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group mercenary army leader and former close confidant of the Russian leader until he led an aborted rebellion in June 2023. He and nine other people were killed two months later when his jet crashed north of Moscow under circumstances that several analysts have said were suspicious.
Sergei Yushenkov, a leader of the anti-Kremlin “Liberal Russia” party, was shot to death in front of his home in Moscow in April 2003. Anna Politkovskaya, one of her country’s most prominent journalists, covered the fighting in Chechnya and reported on documented abuses committed by Russian forces. She was fatally shot in an execution-style killing in her apartment in October 2006.
Boris Nemtsov was a reform-minded deputy prime minister who became one of Mr. Putin’s most ardent opponents and opposed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. In February 2015, he was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin in what reports at the time said was a “gangland-style” killing.
Russian government officials are pushing back against concerns from the West that Mr. Navalny’s death was suspicious.
“The immediate reaction of NATO leaders to Navalny’s death in the form of direct accusations against Russia is self-exposing,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram. “There is no forensic examination yet, but the West’s conclusions are already ready.”
Mr. Stoltenberg said he wouldn’t speculate if Mr. Navalny’s death could be linked to the upcoming Russian presidential election.
“We need to establish all the facts, and Russia needs to answer all the questions — and there are many questions — about the cause of his death,” he said. “My main message today is to express my condolences. My thoughts are with his loved ones and his family.”
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
• David R. Sands can be reached at dsands@washingtontimes.com.
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