RIGA, Latvia — Russia’s jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in a Russian prison colony on Friday, Russia’s prison service announced early afternoon, without giving the cause of his death.
News of his death flooded across Russian Telegram news channels early Friday afternoon.
The news was later confirmed in a curt announcement by prison authorities.
They reported that Navalny “felt unwell” after a walk “almost immediately losing consciousness,” adding that a medical team failed to resuscitate him.
“Medical workers from the institution arrived immediately and an emergency medical team was called. All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, but did not yield positive results. Emergency doctors confirmed the death of the convict,” the statement said.
Navalny, a longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin and his main political rival, survived a poisoning attempt with a banned chemical nerve agent in August 2020 that the State Department said was carried out by agents of the Russian state.
He had been jailed since returning to Russia in January 2021, in charges that he and international rights groups described as trumped up for political retribution. He had been barred from running against Putin in presidential elections in 2018. Putin is again up for reelection next month.
Navalny’s team did not immediately confirm his death, but said his lawyer was flying to the prison colony in Russia’s far north.
“Navalny was finally killed by Putin today,” investigative journalist Christo Grozev of Bellingcat posted on social media. Grozev had worked with Navalny on investigations that exposed the state agents responsible for his 2020 poisoning, which was later the subject of a documentary.