According to Russian information, Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is dead. The 47-year-old was considered a political prisoner and had been in a Russian prison camp for years.
The critic of the Russian leadership, Alexei Navalny, is dead. The prison administration announced this on Friday. The information cannot currently be independently verified. The 47-year-old has served years of imprisonment in a penal colony. Navalny was convicted, among other things, of extremism; he has always denied the accusation. His political movement was banned and close associates were imprisoned or fled abroad.
Navalny was most recently in a prison camp in the city of Kovrov in the Vladimir region, around 260 kilometers east of Moscow. He was sentenced to 19 years in a prison camp and is internationally classified as a political prisoner of Moscow. The opposition figure, who also complained about torture in custody, barely survived an assassination attempt using the chemical warfare agent Novichok in August 2020. Navalny had blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin and a hit squad from the domestic secret service FSB for the attack.
Navalny was one of the most popular Russian opposition figures. This was based on his revelations about corruption in the Russian elite and on organizing protests against Putin. However, he was also considered controversial; for example, he was criticized for previous nationalist statements.
More information will follow shortly.