MOSCOW: The Kremlin’s most prominent critic Alexei Navalny died Friday in an Arctic prison, said Russian authorities, announcing his death a month before an election poised to extend Vladimir Putin’s hold on power.
Navalny’s death after three years in detention and a poisoning which he blamed on the Kremlin deprives Russia’s opposition of its figurehead at time of intense repression and Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.
Dissidents and Western officials blamed Putin and his government for the 47-year-old’s death, which followed months of deteriorating health in harsh detention conditions. “Alexei Navalny was tortured and tormented for three years... Murder was added to Alexei Navalny’s sentence,” Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov was quoted as saying by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Russian news agencies reported that medics from a hospital in Russia’s far north spent more than “half an hour” trying to resuscitate Navalny, who reportedly lost consciousness after a walk.
The exiled team of Navalny said it had not been informed of his death and that a lawyer was headed to the Arctic prison colony where he was serving a 19-year term on an extremism conviction.
Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and won a huge following with his campaigning against corruption in Putin’s Russia.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened an investigation into the death.
Citing his spokesman, Russian news agencies reported that Putin had been informed of Navalny’s death.
Putin — who famously never referred to Navalny by name — was on a visit to Chelyabinsk on Friday.
In footage of a meeting with workers in the Urals city published after the announcement of the death, he made no mention of Navalny.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters he did not know any further details about the cause of death.
One of Navalny’s lawyers, Leonid Solovyov, told the independent Novaya Gazeta paper that the Kremlin critic was “normal” when a lawyer saw him on Wednesday.
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