Life and Death in an Arctic Circle Prison Camp: Putin Critic Alexei Navalny Dead After a Walk

Welp. Alexei Navalny is dead. According to the authorities at the Arctic Circle prison camp Putin had banished him to, he keeled over after a walk. Simple as that.

Sure, they called an ambulance, but, oh well – too late. 

This is awful, but who are we talking about here?

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died on Friday after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.

…The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said in a statement that Navalny “felt unwell” after a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) north east of Moscow.

Navalny, the prison service said, had lost consciousness almost immediately.

This seems even more curious when he looked thin, but healthy only yesterday, dinking on a judge for fining him so much that he was running out of his own cash to supplement his prison rations.

To hear that this indomitable man ridiculing this puppet judge in great spirits from the brutal confines of an Arctic penal colony just yesterday is now dead is tragic beyond words, Aleksey Navalny was a hero, may his soul rest in peace.

— SheikYerbutti2 (@SheikYerbutti2) February 16, 2024

One of the most prominent, courageous, and respected “thorns” in Vladimir Putin’s side, Alexei Navalny was a charismatic, principled, and passionate critic of the Russian dictator and the Russian state. His unrelenting outspoken campaigns against cronyism and the perpetual corruption of the ruling Moscow elite earned him a long list of enemies, but none so fierce as Putin himself.

…A former nationalist politician, Navalny helped foment the 2011-12 protests in Russia by campaigning against election fraud and government corruption, investigating Putin’s inner circle and sharing the findings in slick videos that garnered hundreds of millions of views.

The high-water mark in his political career came in 2013, when he won 27% of the vote in a Moscow mayoral contest that few believed was free or fair. He remained a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for years, identifying a palace built on the Black Sea for Putin’s personal use, mansions and yachts used by the ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, and a sex worker who linked a top foreign policy official with a well-known oligarch.

The Kremlin had already once struck out at Navalny in circumstances eerily similar to what occurred this morning. In 2020, immediately prior to national elections, Putin’s ardent antagonist suddenly fell into a coma at his home in Siberia. Russian authorities allowed him to be flown out of the country to Berlin for treatment for the terrifying and mysterious malady.

Which then turned out not to be very mysterious at all – just one almost exclusively prone to afflicting opponents of Putin.

Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny, arrived in Berlin for treatment on Saturday after falling into a coma in Siberia in what his family and supporters suspect was a deliberate poisoning weeks before nationwide local elections.

Mr. Navalny was admitted to Charité, one of Germany’s leading medical research facilities, where he is undergoing extensive diagnostic tests, the hospital said after a plane transporting him from Russia touched down. He arrived more than 48 hours after he first lost consciousness, a delay his supporters bitterly criticized Russian officials for having caused.

“Patient stable, mission accomplished,” said Jaka Bizilj, who runs the Cinema for Peace, the foundation that organized the air transport at the urging of Mr. Navalny’s friends and family.

Mr. Navalny became violently ill on Thursday shortly after a Moscow-bound flight he had boarded took off, forcing an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk.

Windows weren’t a big thing for Putin yet.

Even as European laboratories confirmed a particular favorite of Russian assassins as the poisoning agent, Navalny, still confined to a hospital bed, was planning his return to his home country to confront Putin and continue leading the opposition.

 Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who is recovering from being poisoned, has spoken to a German prosecutor about the attempt on his life and says he plans to return to Russia as soon as he has recovered, a senior German security official said on Monday.

…The news came hours after the German government announced that laboratories in France and Sweden had confirmed that the substance used to poison Mr. Navalny was a form of the nerve agent Novichok, results that match Berlin’s own findings and provide additional confidence that the Russian state was involved.

…Mr. Navalny remains heavily guarded by German police in the hospital. In his conversation with the German prosecutor, he refused to cooperate with a Russian request to jointly investigate the case with Germany, the security official said, adding that once he recovers, Mr. Navalny plans to return to Russia.

“He’s not planning to go into exile in Germany,” the official said. “He wants to go home to Russia and he wants to continue his mission.”

Go home Alexei Navalny did.

He returned in 2021, was swiftly snatched up, and imprisoned on a raft of charges like extremism, etc. He’d been in custody ever since. In August of last year, Navalny was sentenced to 19 years and sent away…far away. So far, his lawyers were frantically trying to find him for months, and when they did?

The news of his location couldn’t have been worse.

…Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison in August, after he was found guilty of creating an extremist community, financing extremist activists and various other crimes. He was already serving sentences of 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other charges he denies.

Four months later, his lawyers said they had lost contact with Navalny, who was believed to be imprisoned in a penal colony about 150 miles east of Moscow.

He failed to appear at several scheduled court hearings in December. His legal team said on December 22 that he’d been missing for 17 days.

After filing 680 requests to locate Navalny, his team announced on December 25 that they had “found” him more than a thousand miles away at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, known as “Polar Wolf.”

“The conditions there are harsh, with a special regime in the permafrost zone. It is very difficult to get there, and there are no letter delivery systems,” said Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation.

And now? He’s gone.

In yet another alignment with the last time Putin tried to off him, Nalvany died right before Russia’s scheduled presidential elections next month.

HUH

…Navalany’s reported death comes shortly before Russia’s presidential election, set to take place on March 17, where Putin is widely tipped to win a fifth term in a move that would see him retain power until at least 2030.

In Russia, there are no coincidences.

#Navalny‘s appeal to Russians in case of his death

🎥 Excerpt from the movie “Navalny” by Daniel Rohr, 2022 pic.twitter.com/QET6hQ122V

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 16, 2024

“…If they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibily strong…You’re not allowed to give up…We don’t realize how strong we actually are…“

There are so few real, honest-to-God heroes on the world stage. 

Now there is one less.

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz baldy laid it out this morning, speaking to Navalny’s determination to return to his homeland, knowing the risks.

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

Alexei Navalny’s life was truly a LIFE. 

Alexei Navalny in happier times, with his wife Yulia in 2020, before he was incarcerated for the last time. This video from his daughter Dasha. pic.twitter.com/txJeldIURC

— @juliamacfarlaneABC on threads (@juliamacfarlane) February 16, 2024

I pray his family is safe, that they remain so, and that his magnificent memory will always be a source of immense pride and comfort to them.

The face of courage, to the end. RIP. pic.twitter.com/F2z095C8jv

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) February 16, 2024

This is awful.