Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny dies in prison

TDT | Manama                                                      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The Kremlin’s most prominent critic Alexei Navalny died yesterday in an Arctic prison, Russian officials said, a month before an election poised to extend Vladimir Putin’s hold on power.

Navalny’s death after three years in detention and a poisoning deprives Russia’s opposition of its figurehead at a time of intense repression and Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.

Russian news agencies reported that medics from a hospital in Russia’s Far North spent more than “half an hour” trying to resuscitate Navalny, who reportedly lost consciousness after a walk.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he did not know any further details about the cause of death.

Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and won a huge following with his campaigning against corruption.

One of Navalny’s lawyers, Leonid Solovyov, told the independent Novaya Gazeta paper that the Kremlin critic was “normal” when a lawyer saw him on Wednesday.

In footage of a court hearing from his prison colony on Thursday, Navalny was seen smiling and joking as he addressed the judge by video link.

State media reported he raised no health complaints during the session. Western governments and Russian opposition figures immediately blamed the Kremlin.

US Vice President Kamala Harris said his death was “a sign of Putin’s brutality,” while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “Russia is responsible for this.”

That was echoed by European Council President Charles Michel, who said the EU held the Russia regime solely “responsible for this tragic death”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Navalny had “paid for his courage with his life”, while Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his death was a “huge tragedy” for the Russian people.

The president of Latvia said he had been “brutally murdered by the Kremlin” while French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said his death “reminds us of the reality of Putin’s regime”. Moscow, meanwhile, said the West was making “sweeping accusations.”

Its top lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin went further by saying that the death suited Western leaders because they were “losing” the battle in Ukraine.

Navalny, who led street protests for more than a decade, became a household name through his anti-corruption campaigning.

His exposes of official corruption, posted on his YouTube channel racked up millions of views and brought tens of thousands of Russians to the streets, despite harsh anti-protest laws.

He was jailed in early 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was recuperating from a near-fatal poisoning attack with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

In a string of cases he was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges widely condemned by independent rights groups and in the West as retribution for his opposition to the Kremlin.