Russia’s prison agency says that imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died. He was 47.
The wife of Alexei Navalny has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin will “bear responsibility” for what he has done following reports that her husband has died in prison near the Artic Circle.
Navalny, by far Russia’s most famous opposition leader, rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning the elite class around Putin and voicing allegations of corruption on a vast scale. Western leaders were quick to suggest that Navalny’s death was caused by the Russian government, with Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron saying Putin should be accountable for what had happened.“No one should doubt the dreadful nature of his regime,” he said. “Putin’s Russia fabricated charges against him, poisoned him, sent him to an arctic penal colony and now he has tragically died.”
Putin, who appeared on state television on Friday morning talking to students and workers at a factory in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural mountains, has yet to comment, although his spokesman said he had been informed.“The immediate reaction of the leaders of Nato countries to the death of Navalny in the form of accusations towards Russia is self-incriminating,” she said.
Navalny had continued to exchange regular messages with supporters through letters despite his sentence and he continued to regularly speak out against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Navalny this week had posted on social media a message to his wife, Yulia: “Baby, I know that everything with you is like in the song – there are cities between us, airport landing lights, blue snowstorms and thousands of kilometres. But I feel you by my side every second and I love you all the more.”Navalny’s popularity increased after the leading charismatic politician, Boris Nemtsov, was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.