World Leaders React as Russian Opposition Leader, Alexey Navalny Dies in Prison

Peter Uzoho with agency report

Imprisoned Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, yesterday, died after collapsing and losing consciousness in the remote penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long sentence, the federal prison service disclosed.
Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Vladimir Putin has been briefed on the death of Navalny, a fierce critic of the Russian president.
Kira Yarmysh, a spokesperson for Navalny, said his lawyer was on the way to the IK-3 penal colony, located in Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, according to Aljazeera.

Navalny’s aide Leonid Volkov, alleged that Russian authorities published “a confession that they killed” him in prison.
Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote on her Telegram channel that the West had already arrived at “conclusions” without forensic evidence.

Reacting to the development, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said Navalny was “obviously killed by Putin.”
Speaking from Berlin, where he was signing a security deal with Germany, he added that Putin does not care who dies as long as he maintains his position at the top.

Vice President Kamala Harris of the United States said Navalny’s death, if confirmed, would be “a further sign of Putin’s brutality.”
“Let us be clear: Russia is responsible,” she said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Speaking before Harris, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said if reports of Navalny’s death were accurate, they underscored Russia’s “weakness and rot”.
“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,” Blinken said on the sidelines of the conference in Munich. “Russia is responsible for this.”

 European Council President, Charles Michel, said the Russian dissident “fought for the values of freedom and democracy” and made the ultimate sacrifice.
“The EU holds the Russian regime solely responsible for this tragic death.”
The Canadian Foreign Minister, Melanie Joly, said reports of Navalny, “gave his freedom in the hopes of a better, more democratic future for the Russian people”.
“Reports of his death are a painful reminder of Putin’s continued oppressive regime,” Joly added.

Jan Lipavsky, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Czech Republic, wrote on X that Russia was treating its citizens like it treats its foreign policy.
“It has turned into a violent state that kills people who dream of a better future, like Nemtsov or now Navalny – imprisoned and tortured to death for standing up to Putin,” he said, referring to assassinated Putin critic Boris Nemtsov.
“Alexei Navalny paid with his life for his resistance to a system of oppression,” French Foreign Minister, Stephane Sejourne, said on X.

“His death at a penal colony reminds us of the reality of Vladimir Putin’s regime,” Sejourne said, expressing condolences to Navalny’s family and the Russian people.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Navalny paid for his courage with his life.

Scholz recalled occasions when he had spoken with Navalny about the “great courage” that prompted him to return to Russia after recovering in Berlin from a poisoning attack.

“He has now paid for this courage with his life,” said Scholz.

Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, said in a statement that Navalny’s death was “disturbing”, and served as a warning to the rest of the world.

“We express our heartfelt condolences and hope that full clarity will be revealed over this disturbing event,” she added.

Latvian President, Edgars Rinkevics, said in a post on X, “Whatever your thoughts about Alexey Navalny as the politician, he was just brutally murdered by the Kremlin.”

Navalny was in the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, where he was transferred in December.

The “special regime” or “Polar Wolf” colony is among the harshest in Russia’s prison system and is located in a place with severe winters. Most inmates have been convicted of grave crimes. Kharp is about 100km (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were part of the Soviet gulag camp system.

“Medical staff arrived immediately, and an ambulance team was called,” the prison service said. “Resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not yield positive results. Paramedics confirmed the death of the convict. The causes of death are being established.”

Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny’s mother, was quoted by Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta as saying that her son had been “alive, healthy and happy” when she last saw him on February 12.

“I don’t want to hear any condolences. We saw him in prison on February 12, in a meeting. He was alive, healthy and happy,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who held a press conference at the Munich Security Summit attended by global leaders and officials, said that Putin and his associates should not go unpunished if the news of her husband’s death was confirmed.

She called on the international community to come together and fight against the “horrific regime” in Moscow.

Before Navalny was arrested, he led campaigns against corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Navalny strongly condemned the war in social media posts from prison and during his court appearances.

Less than a month after the start of the war, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court in a case he and his supporters rejected as fabricated. The investigators immediately launched a new investigation and in August 2023, Navalny was convicted on charges of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

After the verdict, Navalny said he understood that he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime”.