Alexie Navalny, Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence. The Kremlin, which casts Navalny and his supporters as U.S.-backed extremists, has denied state involvement in his death. Navalny’s death certificate, according to supporters, said he died of natural causes. This stunning news, less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power, brought renewed criticism and outrage from world leaders toward the Russian president who has suppressed opposition at home.
Navalny rose to prominence more than a decade ago by documenting and becoming an outspoken critic of what he said was the vast corruption and luxury among the “crooks and thieves” running Putin’s Russia.
In January 2021, Navalny was imprisoned under trumped-up charges on his return from Germany where he was recovering from near-fatal poisoning by a military-grade nerve agent in 2020. Once in prison, additional charges were brought against him, and his prison term was extended to 19 years. He was sent to a strictest-regime Russian penal colony near the Arctic Circle where he was consistently denied adequate medical treatment and sent to punishment cells on 27 occasions for prolonged periods, over 300 days in total, for purported disciplinary infringements, such as having buttons undone. According to Amnesty International, his conditions in detention amounted to a violation of the absolute prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
Just the day before his death, Navalny was shown joking in court via a video link. Teasingly, he requested a judge use some of his vast salary to top up his own account. The online news outlet SOTA reported that the court session was convened after an “argument” with a prison officer who tried to confiscate Navalny’s pen. Navalny wrote later on Thursday that he had been given 15 days in solitary confinement.
Russian prisons are brutal and his team had repeatedly raised concerns that he would be harmed or killed. Navalny was repeatedly placed in punishment cells for various offenses, including for his attitude. Though he joked about the conditions, the Polar Wolf colony is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Last year, he brought light to a problem that haunts Russia’s prisons: a lack of teeth due to poor nutrition. Less than a year ago, his team said he was grappling with severe stomach pain in jail.
Navalny’s ally Maria Pevchikh, who is based outside Russia, did not present documentary evidence for her assertion that Putin had a hand in Navalny’s death. Pevchikh said that talks about exchanging Navalny and two unnamed U.S. nationals for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB security service hit man in jail in Germany, were in their final stages at the time of his death. Navalny, she alleged, had been killed a day later because Putin could not tolerate the thought of him being free. She did not explain why Putin had not simply refused to swap Navalny if he was opposed to such an exchange.
On March 1st, he was laid to rest in a church in Moscow. Many thousands of people came out to pay their respects at the cemetery and outside the church where the funeral took place, despite fears of repression from Moscow police. Among the large crowd, many people clutched bunches of flowers and some joined in a series of chants – “Russia will be free,” “No to war,” “Russia without Putin,” “We won’t forgive,” and “Putin is a murderer”.
Despite concerns that Navalny’s death will lead to the downfall of the opposition movement in Russia, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, has pledged to continue her husband’s work, giving a glimpse of hope to the people of Russia.
