Russia’s most significant opposition leader for the past decade, Alexei Navalny, has died in prison inside the Arctic Circle, the prison service said.
Navalny is seen as President Vladimir Putin’s most vociferous critic; he was serving a 19-year jail term for offenses widely considered politically motivated.
He was moved to an Arctic penal colony, considered one of the toughest jails, late last year.
The prison service in the Yamalo-Nenets district said he had “felt unwell” after a walk on Friday.
He had “almost immediately lost consciousness; the emergency doctors declared the prisoner dead; the cause of death is being established,” it said in a statement.
Persecondnews reports that an emergency medical team had immediately been called and tried to resuscitate him, but without success.
Navalny’s lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, said he would not be commenting yet, while his close aide, Leonid Volkov, wrote on X: “Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexey Navalny in prison. We do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn’t true.”
The cause of death had not been established, the penitentiary service said. Navalny had previously been treated in the hospital after complaining of malnourishment and other ailments due to mistreatment in the prison.
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