Top Kremlin critic Navalny dead

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 that he blamed on the Kremlin deprives Russia’s opposition of its figurehead at a time of intense repression and Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.
There are now no opposition leaders of such prominence left in Russia.
For some young urban Russians, Navalny offered hope of an alternative future to Putin, who has served as Russia’s paramount leader longer than anyone since Josef Stalin.
Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
Navalny said at the time that he was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020.
The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he was poisoned with a nerve agent.
There are no opposition leaders of such prominence left in Russia.
Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran liberal, called Navalny’s death a tragedy that showed the need for reform and said he feared for the health of other opposition activists in jail.
In Moscow, at a memorial to the victims of Soviet political repression in the shadow of the former KGB headquarters, some people laid roses and carnations. Police looked on.
One note read: “Alexei Navalny - we remember you.”
Dissidents and Western officials blamed Putin and his government for the 47-year-old’s death, which followed months of deteriorating health in harsh detention conditions.
“Alexei Navalny was tortured and tormented for three years ... murder was added to Alexei Navalny’s sentence,” Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov was quoted as saying by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
“Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” US President Joe Biden said in remarks from the White House. “Even in prison he was a powerful voice for the truth.”
The death was announced by Russia’s federal penitentiary service, which said that Navalny “felt bad after a walk, almost immediately losing conciousness”.
Russian news agencies reported that medics from a local hospital arrived within minutes and spent more than “half an hour” trying to resuscitate him.
Navalny’s wife, Yulia, said she held Putin personally responsible for her husband’s death and called on the international community to “unite and defeat this evil, terrifying regime”.
Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and won a huge following with his campaigning against corruption under Putin.
The Russian leader – who famously never referred to Navalny by name – was on a visit to the Urals yesterday and made no mention of the death in his public appearance.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Western leaders of “absolutely unacceptable” and “hysterical” reactions to Navalny’s death.
Moscow authorities also warned the public against taking part in any protests as videos shared online showed dozens of Russians laying flowers at monuments to victims of political repression in different Russian cities.
At least one person was detained for holding up a placard that appeared to say “murderers” on it, according to a video posted by the independent Sota Telegram channel.
“They won’t let anyone go out in the streets. The government is terribly afraid” of a “wave” of protests, Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R. Politik consultancy, told AFP.
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.
In it, Navalny is seen peering through a barred window, laughing and cracking jokes about his depleting funds and the judge’s salary.
“Your Honour, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to ‘warm up’ my personal account, because I am running out of money,” he said via video link.
State media reported that he raised no health complaints during the session.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference hours after news of her husband’s death, Yulia Navalnaya said Putin and his entourage “will be punished for everything they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband”.
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”.
“His death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said shortly before meeting Navalny’s wife in Munich.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that 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, Edgars Rinkevics, said Navalny 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”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, battling Russian forces for the past two years, said the Kremlin critic had been “killed by Putin”.
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.
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.
His return to Russia despite knowing he would face jail brought him admiration.
“I’m not afraid and I call on you not to be afraid,” he said in an appeal to supporters as he landed in Moscow, moments before being detained on charges linked to an old fraud conviction.
His 2021 arrest spurred some of the largest demonstrations Russia had seen in decades, and thousands were detained at rallies nationwide calling for his release.
From behind bars he was a staunch opponent of Moscow’s full-scale military offensive against Ukraine, and watched on, helplessly, as the Kremlin dismantled his organisation and locked up his allies.
Dozens of his top supporters fled into exile and continued to campaign against the offensive on Ukraine and growing repression inside Russia.
Late last year, Navalny was moved to a remote Arctic prison colony in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets region in northern Siberia.
Navalny said in January that his daily routine included prison walks in freezing temperatures, and that he had to use an open-air concrete yard measuring just 11 by three steps wide.
Since being jailed in 2021, he spent more than 300 days in solitary confinement, where prison authorities kept him over alleged minor infringements of prison rules.
The last post on Navalny’s Telegram channel, which he managed through his lawyers and team in exile, was a tribute to his wife posted on Valentine’s Day.
In a documentary filmed before he returned to Russia, Navalny was asked what message he wanted to leave to the Russian people should he die or be killed.
“Don’t give up. You mustn’t, you can’t give up,” he said. “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Therefore, don’t do nothing.”