The #1 enemy of Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny, has suddenly died while imprisoned in Russia’s harshest prison. This comes just days after he was seen in good health and one day after he testified via a video link in a court proceeding.
Navalny managed to survive one assassination attempt but returned to the country where he was imprisoned by Putin and now he’s dead.
Here’s more from The Daily Beast:
Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Vladimir Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. It was a courageous but one-sided struggle that finally ended on Friday in a prison camp inside the Arctic Circle.
Russian prison authorities said the 47-year-old died at 2:17 p.m. on Friday after collapsing following a walk at the Soviet-era IK-3 penal colony, 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow.
Navalny’s team were shocked by the announcement of his death, which came just days after they had seen him in relatively good health.
“Alexei had a lawyer at his place on Wednesday,” Leonid Solovyev, his laywer, told the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Everything was normal then.”
On Thursday, Navalny appeared in court via videolink and seemed to be in good spirits, laughing and telling the judge that he would send him his bank details so he could top it up from his “huge federal salary, because thanks to your decisions I am running out of money.”
One day later, he was dead, Russia’s leading opposition voice silenced just a month before a presidential election at which Putin will once again face no real rival.
Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.
Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.
After his inevitable arrest, he used a series of Moscow show trials to lay bare Russia’s ugliness and injustice.
He was then subjected to the harshest conditions in some of Russia’s worst prisons until his inevitable demise. The prison service in Yamalo-Nenets, where he was being held, announced his death on Friday.