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Alexei, Navalny, Kremlin critic:


“Your honor, I am sending you my personal account number so that you can use your huge federal judge salary to replenish my personal account. Because I'm running out of money, and thanks to your decisions, it's going to happen even faster. So send it over.”

A joke - at Alexei Navalny's last appearance in the Siberian penal colony.

The next day, the prison authorities made a succinct announcement: The imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is dead, it says. Navalny “felt unwell” after a walk on Friday and “lost consciousness almost immediately.” Medical personnel were called, but were unable to revive Navalny.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured journalists in an initial statement that "all investigations and clarifications are currently being carried out in accordance with the existing rules." When asked about a cause of death - he shrugs his shoulders. No, he doesn't know that, the doctors should find out.

The 47-year-old Navalny was sentenced to a total of more than 30 years in prison. He was the most famous face of the Russian opposition - and one who the Kremlin probably feared most. It was only in December that Navalny was transferred to the “Polarwolf” prison camp in Siberia. The prison is considered one of the toughest in Russia. Navalny, a husband and father of two children, had repeatedly complained about the lack of medical help, harassment and even torture in the prison camp.

He wanted to wage his defiant fight against the system in Russia itself - and not from abroad. The decision to return home from Germany in January 2021 was an expression of this. He had previously been treated at the Berlin Charité after an assassination attempt with the nerve agent Novichok. After his return he was immediately arrested.

Navalny had always called Putin a “murderer.” In Berlin, Ukrainian President Zelenskyj commented on the news of Navalny's death - with a similar accusation:



Volodomyr Zelenskyj, President of Ukraine:


"Obviously Alexei Navalny was killed by Putin, like thousands of others who were tormented and tortured because of this one person."

From the prison camp, Navalny has repeatedly denounced Russian war crimes since the beginning of Putin's attack on Ukraine. Above all, he warned of Putin's imminent re-election.