Alexei Navalny’s team confirmed the Russian dissident’s death on Saturday, a day after Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced he had died. fell unconscious and died after a tour of the Arctic prison where he was held.
“Alexey Navalny was killed. His death occurred on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. local time, according to an official appeal to Alexey’s mother, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmish told X on Saturday.
“An employee of the colony said that Navalny’s body is now in Salekhar. He was picked up by IC investigators. Now they are conducting “research” with him, he added.
“We demand that the body of Alexei Navalny be handed over to his family immediately.
Yesterday, Navalny’s family together with the wife of the Russian government, Yulia Navalnaya, said, “We cannot trust Putin and his government. They keep lying.” Speech at the Munich Security Conference.
“But if it is true, I would like Putin and all his associates, everyone around him – his government, his friends – to know that they will be punished for what they did to our country, my family and my family. with my husband,” she said. “They will answer to justice and that day will come soon.”
Navalny, 47, died while serving more than three decades in prison on politically motivated charges of “extremism” and creating an illegal NGO. Fears for his life were last raised in December, when he went missing from the Russian penal system in December. finally turns In a high-security correctional colony in a remote town above the Arctic Circle.
The Russian Investigative Committee said it has started a procedural investigation into the death.
An outspoken critic of Putin, Navalny has been the biggest thorn in the side of the Kremlin.
It was in 2020 poisoned with a military nerve agent — there was an attempt on his life, and he directly blamed Putin — and the Russian president was given consecutive prison terms for the rest of his life in order not to pose a political threat to Putin.
Responding to Navalny’s death on Friday, President Joe Biden said, “I hope so[d] Blaming “Putin and his thugs” for his death, he forced Congress to approve additional aid to Ukraine.