Alexei Navalny dies in Arctic prison colony

Jailed Russian opposition leader had been serving his sentence in Siberia

Alexei Navalny has died, the prison service responsible for the jail where he was being held said on Friday.
The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District claimed the prominent critic of Vladimir Putin had “felt ill” on Friday after a walk, “almost immediately lost consciousness” and died soon after.
It said doctors were unable to resuscitate him and that the cause of death is “being established”, state news agency Tass reported.
Edgars Rinkevics, president of Latvia, said Mr Navalny had been “brutally murdered by the Kremlin”.
“That’s a fact and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime,” he said.
Dmitry Gudkov, the exiled opposition politician, said: “Even if Alexei died of ‘natural causes’, they were trigged by his poisoning and the ensuring torture in prison. (Navalny’s) blood is on Putin’s hands.”
Joe Biden, the US president, said in June 2021 that the consequences of Mr Navalny’s death “would be devastating for Russia”.
The Kremlin said it had “no information” on Mr Navalny’s death and that Putin had been informed.
Mr Navalny previously survived an attempted assassination in August 2020 when he was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent on an internal flight.
He had emerged as the most prominent opposition politician in Russian and led major street protests against corruption and Putin’s regime.
Rishi Sunak said Mr Navalny’s death was a “huge tragedy” for “the people of Russia”.
“As the fiercest advocate for Russian democracy, Alexei Navalny demonstrated incredible courage throughout his life,” he said.
Stephane Sejourne, France’s foreign minister, said Mr Navalny had had paid with his life for his “resistance to a system of oppression”.
Leonid Solovyov, Mr Navalny’s lawyer, told Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta that “everything was fine” when a lawyer had visited him at the prison on Wednesday.
The newspaper published footage of him appearing in court on Thursday via video link which it said showed him “healthy and cheerful”.
Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny’s former campaign manager and one of his closest advisers, said Mr Navalny’s lawyer is on his way to the remote prison colony in Yamal, western Siberia, to confirm the reports of his death. 
Kira Yarmysh, Mr Navalny’s spokesperson, said there was currently “no confirmation” of his death.
“As soon as we have some information, we will report on it,” she said.
He was jailed for two-and-a-half years in 2021 after returning to Russia upon his recovery, a sentence which was extended by nine years in March 2022 on embezzlement and contempt of court charges.
A court then extended his sentence to 19 years in August last year on extremism charges and moved him to a harsher prison.
In December, Mr Navalny went missing from his prison colony for two weeks, later re-appearing at the “Polar Wolf” colony in the Arctic Circle which is considered to be one of the country’s toughest jails.
Dmitry Muratov, the Russian newspaper editor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Reuters that he believed the death was “murder” brought on by the conditions Mr Navalny was being held in.
Russia will hold a presidential vote in March which is expected to hand Putin a fifth term as president.
Moscow has for years sidelined opposition figures, a clampdown that intensified after the Kremlin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in 2022.
Boris Nadezhdin, a vocal opponent of the war, was disqualified from standing in March’s election despite earning the 100,000 signatures necessary to get on the ballot.