Alexei Navalny, 47, was being held in the “Polar Wolf” penal colony, considered Russia’s toughest prison. Here’s how an anti-corruption crusader became Vladimir Putin’s biggest rival:.
Alexei Navalny, a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s biggest opposition leader, has died in prison, the country’s prison service said.
According to the prison service, after taking a walk on Friday he “felt unwell” and “almost immediately lost consciousness”, with officers unable to revive him. “Emergency doctors declared the inmate dead. The cause of death is being established,” the prison service said.
There is already speculation that Navalny, 47, was the victim of a political assassination carried out by Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has said it has no information about the cause of death and Navalny’s camp has not yet made any concrete statement.
Meanwhile, reactions have emerged from across the West criticizing Putin for silencing all dissent in Russia.
Read Who was Alexey Navalny?
A former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence as an anti-corruption crusader. According to him, Putin has created a brittle system of personal rule, completely dependent on sycophancy and corruption.
Navalny told Reuters in a 2011 interview, “Corruption is the foundation of contemporary Russia, it is the foundation of Mr. Putin’s political power.” Navalny and his team created engaging videos, garnering millions of views on YouTube, criticizing Putin and highlighting the opulent lifestyles of Russia’s elite.
You can also read here. What are Russia’s penal colonies – as well as what the conditions were like there?
When protests against Putin began in December 2011, he was one of the first people to be arrested. In 2013 he ran for mayor of Moscow and won 27 percent of the vote, despite receiving no coverage from state media. He has since been barred from running for office on various grounds.
Also how was he persecuted by the Kremlin?
The Kremlin had always denied Navalny’s claims about corruption and Putin’s personal wealth, and was brutal in its dealings with dissidents, portraying him as an extremist and a CIA puppet.
Navalny was charged with corruption, misuse of funds and extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison in August 2023. He was serving a previous sentence of one and a half years for breach of his conditional liberty, fraud and contempt of court. Navalny said that all the charges against him were made to keep him away from public life and politics.
In August 2020, he fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The pilot saved his life by making an emergency landing. Then, Navalny was transferred by plane to Berlin, where he was treated for exposure to neurotoxins. Laboratory tests in three countries showed it was Novichok, a poison developed in the Soviet Union and a favorite of Russian secret agents. It was a weapon.
You must also read this, how Vladimir Research is using homophobia to gain strong control over Russia ?
Despite credible threats to his life, Navalny voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021, and was immediately arrested upon arrival. Since then he was in jail.
In December 2023, he went “missing” from Penal Colony No. 6, where he was being held. He was eventually held in the IK-3 penal colony, also known as the “Polar Wolf” colony, in Kharap in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 km northeast of Moscow and just inside the Arctic Circle.
This penal colony is considered to be Russia’s toughest colony, where “prisoners must endure long, dark, cold winters as well as clouds of mosquitoes in the summer,” the NYT reported. It was established in the 1960s on Stalin’s instructions to prison workers building a railway across the Russian Arctic, but it was never fully finished.
Speaking to Reuters in December 2023, Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said: “This prison will be much worse than before… They are trying to make his life as unbearable as possible.
