Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has died, state media reported, citing the prison service of the region where he had been serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism.
There was no immediate confirmation of the 47-year-old’s death from his team. Navalny spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said his lawyer was travelling to the remote prison colony north of the Arctic Circle.
In a statement on Friday quoted by state media, the federal prison service said Navalny “felt bad” after a walk and lost consciousness “almost immediately”.
It added: “Medical staff arrived immediately, and an ambulance team was called. Resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not yield positive results. Paramedics confirmed the death of the convict. The causes of death are being established.”
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had been informed of Navalny’s death.
Navalny aide Leonid Volkov posted on X: “Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexei Navalny in prison. We do not have any way to confirm it or to prove this isn’t true.”
Death being investigated
Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova said that the prison service reported Navalny’s death in colony number 3 which is “a very, very harsh prison”, adding that “his health has been pretty bad lately”.
The official cause of death has not been announced and an investigation is under way, Shapovalova reported.
Navalny was in the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
The “special regime” or “Polar Wolf” colony is among the harshest in Russia’s prison system and is located in a place with severe winters. Most inmates have been convicted of grave crimes. Kharp is about 100km (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were part of the Soviet gulag camp system.
Navalny, a fierce critic of Putin, has been imprisoned since January 2021 when he returned to Moscow after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Before he was arrested, he led campaigns against corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests.
Jailed on charges of extremism, he saw his sentence extended to 19 years in 2023.
