Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny dies aged 47

By Stefan J. Bos

Russia's prison service in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District claimed that Russia's famous anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny "felt unwell" after a walk Friday and "almost immediately lost consciousness."

It stressed that medical staff had been called but that they were unable to resuscitate Navalny. It said the cause of his death was being established.

However, the sudden death of the 47-year-old raised questions as it came amid a reported Kremlin crackdown on dissent and questions about the conditions in Russian prisons.

In recent years, Navalny had faced physical attacks, repeated arrests, investigations, and criminal proceedings, which he claimed were politically motivated.

Most notably, he survived an assassination attempt in 2020 that involved the nerve agent Novichok.

After the Novichok poisoning, Russian officials agreed to fly a comatose Navalny to Germany for treatment, with Navalny waking up and eventually recovering in Berlin's Charite hospital.

Staying in Germany

However, with Navalny staying in Germany for several months after his release from the hospital, Russian authorities warned he violated probation terms of an earlier court case and threatened to arrest him upon his return to Russia.

Despite the warning, Navalny chose to return to Moscow in January 2021. Russian authorities detained him at the airport, and the politician has been behind bars ever since.

His controversial convictions led to a prison sentence of more than 30 years.

Navalny will be remembered for publicly calling out graft at the top of the Kremlin hierarchy. "Together, we saw a huge bribe given to Putin," he told his many followers on social media. "Now there is not much left to figure out who paid for it and how our president for life formalizes his secret assets."

Navalny became the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and was one of the leaders of the antigovernment protests in 2011-2013, culminating in his unsuccessful run for mayor of Moscow.

Navalny described Russian President Putin as a "madman" and said the ruling party in Russia was full of "crooks and thieves."

Polar wolf

His actions upset the Kremlin, and Navalny was sent in December to the notorious "Polar Wolf" colony, officially known as the IK-3 penal colony, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

His death in prison came as Putin has launched a presidential campaign for his fifth term in office.

Navalny pointed out that Putin is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin and could surpass him if he runs again for office in 2030. That is a possibility since Putin had the constitutional rules on term limits rewritten in 2020.

IN 2022, Putin launched Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and injured on both sides, making it Europe's bloodiest armed conflict since the Second World War.

Yet till his last breath, Navalny remained hopeful that the Russian rulers would one day be removed: "I believe, I am confident, and I believe that they are not the masters of our country, and never will be."