The Russian penitentiary service has said that opposition figure Alexey Navalny died in a prison colony where he was serving his sentence.
The service said in a statement on Friday that Navalny, 47, lost consciousness after a walk in the Arctic Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, where the colony is located.
The ward immediately called for an ambulance, and all the necessary resuscitation measures were taken but to no avail, according to the release.
"The doctors of the emergency medical service pronounced the convict dead," the prison service said.
Cause of death
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the doctors should determine the cause of Navalny's death.
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the politician’s team had no confirmation of his death so far and that his lawyer was traveling to the town where he was held.
Navalny had been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption, organized major anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office.
Rejected sentences
He had since received three prison sentences, all of which he rejected as politically motivated.
Shortly after Navalny’s death was reported, the Russian SOTA social media channel shared images of the opposition politician reportedly in court on Thursday. In the footage, Navalny is seen standing up and is laughing and joking with the judge via video link.
Navalny was moved in December from a prison in central Russia to a “special regime” penal colony — the highest security level of prisons in the country — above the Artic Circle.
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