Allies of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who authorities say died in a remote prison colony on Friday, repeatedly warned officials that his health was deteriorating and had demanded toxicology and other tests for severe pain and multiple seizures.
The lawyer and prominent anti-corruption activist was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism, in what supporters and rights advocates widely viewed as punishment for his opposition to President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, 47, collapsed at the Kharp penal colony in northwestern Siberia, Russia’s prison service said, adding that he had started to feel “unwell” after taking a walk.
Over the years, Navalny’s health declined as his role as Putin’s main rival grew. He was physically attacked, arrested, harassed and, in 2020, poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent in a suspected assassination attempt.
The attack nearly killed him, and he fell ill multiple times while in prison over the past three years.
At well over 6 feet tall, Navalny was once a towering presence. But as he campaigned against corruption, violent attacks left him with lasting health problems.
In 2017, shortly after his team released a video accusing then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption, unidentified assailants threw green antiseptic in his face during a public appearance. The attack damaged his right eye, requiring surgery.
The most significant attack was the nerve agent poisoning. He was on a flight out of the city of Tomsk, where he met with local activists, when he became severely ill on the plane. In a video taken by another passenger and posted online, Navalny could be heard crying out in pain.
The plane made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, where Navalny fell into a coma. He was eventually flown for treatment to Berlin, where German authorities announced he had been poisoned with the chemical nerve agent Novichok.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejecting Russian claims that poison could be ruled out, said a military hospital had found “unequivocal” evidence of the agent and declared Navalny the “victim of a crime.”
Novichok is a class of chemical weapons developed by the Soviet Union. It disrupts communication between the muscles and nerves, blocking an enzyme the nervous system needs to function. This type of poison can be fatal, usually causing respiratory failure.
Navalny spent five months recuperating in Germany, relearning how to walk, speak and eat.
According to Robert Chilcott, a toxicology expert at the University of Hertfordshire in Britain, there aren’t enough known cases of Novichok poisoning to say what the long-term health effect is.
But there are probably parallels with “classic” nerve agents such as sarin that can cause cognitive impairment, damage to nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, and changes to the immune system, Chilcott said.
“There is certainly a possibility that prior exposure to a Novichok may have contributed to [Navalny’s] premature death,” Chilcott wrote in an email. “The likely conditions of his incarceration would certainly have been an aggravating factor.”
In 2021, Navalny returned to Russia, where he was arrested soon after he landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for violating parole in an earlier case.
Navalny remained imprisoned until his death, first in detention centers and then in Penal Colony No. 2, about 110 miles east of Moscow. There, guards kept Navalny and other prisoners awake deliberately in what amounted to torture, his attorney Vadim Kobzev said at the time.
In social media posts from that period, Navalny said that he was experiencing numbness in his right leg and that a prison doctor had given him Ibuprofen but no diagnosis. He would later go on a three-week hunger strike to protest his medical treatment in that facility, ending it only after he was advised by civilian doctors that he may die.
Navalny continued to suffer severe and acute pain in his stomach and began having seizures, his attorneys and associates said last year.
Early last year, he developed a cough and fever, prompting his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, to publicly urge prison authorities to provide him with medicine. At the same time, more than 200 Russian doctors signed a letter calling on Putin to “stop abusing” Navalny, whose health they said was being “deliberately harmed.”
By the time of his death, his associates said, he had been held for 300 days in solitary penalty cells for alleged infractions, adding to the stress on his system. In April, he lost 17 pounds after a single stretch in a cramped cell where he was allowed only a book and a cup.
Time spent by Navalny in penalty cells
NATALIA ABBAKUMOVA AND SAMUEL GRANADOS / THE WASHINGTON POST
Time spent by Navalny in penalty cells
NATALIA ABBAKUMOVA AND SAMUEL GRANADOS / THE WASHINGTON POST
“Regarding the blatant and very strange situation around Navalny’s health, with seizures that have never had any signs, we cannot rule out the possibility that he is simply being ‘slowly poisoned’ so that his health does not deteriorate dramatically, but gradually and steadily,” Kobzev posted on social media in April.
“This may sound delusional and paranoid to someone else,” he said, “but not to Navalny after Novichok.”
In August, a closed court convicted Navalny on several charges of funding and inciting “extremist” activity and sentenced him to 19 years in a “special regime” penal colony, the highest-level security prison in the Russian system.
Reserved for the most serious criminals, “special regime” colonies ban family visits and keep the lights in prison cells on constantly.
In a social media post after the verdict was issued, Navalny said he understood it was a life sentence. “I perfectly understand that, like many political prisoners, I am sitting on a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of life of this regime,” he wrote.
In December, Navalny’s team lost contact with him for several weeks as he was transferred into the new system, before eventually finding him at Kharp, also known as IK-3.
Navalny’s last
prison colony
Navalny’s last prison colony
The Kharp prison, which dates to the Soviet-era Gulag system, is geographically isolated and located in a region known for its severe weather.
Russian prisons have long been criticized by human rights groups for widespread abuse, poor conditions and lack of medical support. In its 2022 report on human rights in Russia, the State Department noted that there were reports that prison authorities systematically tortured inmates, “in some cases resulting in death or suicide.”