Navalny was once arrested in 2021 upon his go back to Russia from Germany the place he have been handled for a suspected assassination strive by way of poison.
It is unclear the place the frame of Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny is, his staff stated on Saturday after confirming his dying, tough his stays be launched to his circle of relatives “immediately”.
They added that the Kremlin critic have been “murdered”.
Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, posted on X that Navalny’s mom had travelled to the “special regime” penal colony above the Arctic Circle he have been held in and been given an reputable message that he had died on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. native time.
She was once then knowledgeable that his frame have been transferred by way of investigators to Salekhard.
But when she, and his attorney, arrived on the morgue, it was once closed. “The lawyer called the phone number which was on the door. He was told he was the seventh caller today. Alexei’s body is not in the morgue,” Yarmysh wrote.
“We demand that Alexey Navalny’s body be handed over to his family immediately,” she additionally wrote.
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported that Navalny felt in poor health after a stroll and become subconscious on the penal colony within the the city of Kharp, within the Yamalo-Nenets area about 1,900 kilometres northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived, however he couldn’t be revived. The explanation for dying continues to be “being established,” it stated.
Maria Pevchikh, head of the board of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, stated that the opposition chief would “live on forever in millions of hearts.”
“Navalny was murdered. We still don’t know how we’ll keep on living, but together, we’ll think of something,” she wrote on X.
Arrests persisted Saturday after greater than 100 other people have been detained in quite a lot of Russian towns Friday once they got here to put plants in reminiscence of Navalny at memorials to the sufferers of Soviet-era purges, in step with OVD-Info, a bunch that displays political repression in Russia.
The tributes have been got rid of in a single day, however other people persisted trickling in with plants on Saturday. In Moscow, a big staff of other people chanted “shame” as police dragged a screaming lady from the group, video shared on social media confirmed.
More than 10 other people have been detained at a memorial in St. Petersburg, together with a clergyman who got here to habits a provider for Navalny there.
In different towns around the nation, police cordoned off one of the crucial memorials and officials have been taking footage of those that got here and writing down their private knowledge in a transparent intimidation strive.
Navalny have been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to stand positive arrest after getting better in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed at the Kremlin. He was once later convicted thrice, pronouncing each and every case was once politically motivated, and gained a sentence of nineteen years for extremism.
After the remaining verdict, Navalny stated he understood he was once “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”
The information of Navalny’s dying comes not up to a month earlier than an election that can give President Vladimir Putin every other six years in energy.
It presentations “that the sentence in Russia now for opposition is not merely imprisonment, but death,” stated Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus and senior fellow for Russia & Eurasia on the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Western leaders have in large part held the Kremlin and President Putin chargeable for Navalny’s dying with European Council President Charles Michel writing on X that “the EU holds the Russian regime (solely) responsible for this tragic death.”
