According to prison administration: Kremlin critic Navalny is dead

Ruhr News According to prison administration: Kremlin critic Navalny is dead February 16, 2024 12:37 p.m The Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is dead. The prison administration reported this on Friday. The leading Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has died in custody, according to the judiciary. This was announced by the prison administration, as reported by the state agency Tass. The 47-year-old collapsed on Friday after a walk in his Siberian penal colony and immediately lost consciousness. Attempts at resuscitation by paramedics were unsuccessful. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had been informed. He initially did not give any further details. Navalny's team said it had not yet received any confirmation of the opposition figure's death. His lawyer Leonid Solovyov told the Kremlin-critical newspaper Novaya Gazeta: “I don’t comment at all on the decision of Alexei Navalny’s family.” After being treated in Germany for the consequences of the poison attack, Navalny returned to Russia on January 17, 2021 - and was arrested at the airport. The politician, who was classified as a political prisoner, had already disappeared for several weeks last December. It later turned out that the justice system had moved him from the European part of Russia to a prison camp in the far north of Siberia. Navalny suspected that he should be as isolated as possible there before the upcoming presidential election in March. Navalny repeatedly filed lawsuits against the prison system for violating his rights. He used the court appearances not least to scathingly criticize Putin's authoritarian system and Moscow's war against Ukraine. Most recently, Navalny was no longer involved in the negotiations when the election campaign began. Navalny has been internationally recognized as a political prisoner. The USA, the EU and the federal government have repeatedly expressed concern in recent weeks and called on the Russian leadership to provide information about Navalny's whereabouts. However, Russia rejected this as interference in its internal affairs. The Kremlin also said it could not concern itself with the fate of prisoners in Russia.