“The necessary resuscitation procedures were performed, which did not give any results. The emergency doctors confirmed the death of the condemned man. The causes of death are being established,” says the official statement on the death of Navalni, 47 years old.
The source explained that this Friday after taking a walk in the IK-3 penitentiary in the town of Jarp (Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district) the opposition politician “felt bad”, after which he “lost consciousness.”
He highlighted that emergency medical teams immediately went to the prison to treat Navalni, who was serving almost 30 years in prison for various crimes.
Subsequently, the penitentiary services announced the dispatch of a commission of prison officials and doctors from their central apparatus in Moscow to clarify the causes and circumstances surrounding the death of the inmate.
Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, assured that the opponent’s co-religionists do not yet have confirmation of the death and that his lawyer will leave shortly for Yamalo-Nenets.
Last December, Navalny was transferred from a prison in the Vladimir region, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, to a prison in the Arctic Circle, near the Ural mountain range.
The town of Jarp, which has about 6,000 inhabitants, is located almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow or about 45 hours by train from the Russian capital.
Jarp is less than 50 kilometers from Salekhard, the administrative capital of this territory that has an area larger than that of France, but is populated by only half a million inhabitants.
According to one of his collaborators in exile, Ivan Zhdanov, the prison bears the name “Polar Wolf” and is considered one of the most distant prisons from civilization in all of Russia.
Navalny, who returned to Russia in 2021 after being poisoned the previous year, according to his allies, by the Federal Security Service, was transferred after announcing a campaign against the re-election of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in power since 2000.
The process of transferring to another prison, known as “etapirovanie”, can take weeks, during which time the prisoner is often held incommunicado.
Both the United States, the European Union (EU) and Amnesty International (AI) expressed their concern about the fate of Navalny, the Kremlin’s number one enemy.
On December 7, Navalni asked from prison to vote against Putin in the March 17, 2024 elections.
Navalny also announced the launch of a website (neputin.org) that asked Russians to support any candidate for the presidency, except Putin.
