Putin Under Fire After Alexei Navalny's Death

Russian President Vladimir Putin is under fire after the country's prison service announced that his fiercest critic, jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has died in jail.

Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service said Friday that Navalny, who has been in jail under major fraud and contempt of court charges since February 2021, felt unwell after a walk, "lost consciousness almost immediately," and died shortly afterward.

Responding to the news, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs accused the Kremlin of murdering Navalny.

"Whatever your thoughts about Alexey [Navalny] as the politician, he was just brutally murdered by the Kremlin," Rinkēvičs said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "That's a fact and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia's current regime. My condolences to the family and friends."

Ken Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, called the news "horrible."

"We don't know the circumstances, but it's hard to believe that his death wasn't the product of his mistreatment in isolated custody, if not another deliberate attack like the FSB's post Novichok poisoning," he said on X.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

The Context

Russian opposition leader Navalny, seen as Putin's biggest critic, has been in jail under major fraud and contempt of court charges since February 2021. He was being held in an Arctic penal colony, considered one of the country's harshest, where he had been serving a 19-year sentence.

Navalny's charges had been widely viewed as politically motivated, and his death is likely to be seen as a political assassination.

Multiple opponents of Putin have died under mysterious circumstances during his rule, including the recent case of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late head of the Wagner Group, who attempted to lead an uprising on the Kremlin. Moscow officials said he died in a private jet crash in August 2023, shortly after his mutiny attempt.

Four years ago, a suspected poisoning incident by Russia's FSB security service using a Novichok agent left Navalny in a coma. He was transported to Germany for medical attention and he returned to Russia in January 2021 upon his recovery. He was then hit with the first of his many prison sentences.

What We Know

Details are scarce and Navalny's team has so far remained tight-lipped on the situation.

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's press secretary, said on X that his team has not received confirmation of his death.

"Alexey's lawyer is currently on his way to Kharp. As soon as we have some information, we will report on it," she wrote.

Navalny's lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, told the independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta that the activist's family has asked him not to comment on the situation.

Navalny had reportedly been visited as recently as Wednesday and he seemed well, Solovyov said.

"Now we're figuring it out. Alexey had a lawyer on Wednesday. Everything was fine then," he said.

Views

News of Navalny's death has been met with widespread condemnation.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock implied that the Kremlin critic had been deliberately killed, saying on X that Navalny died because he was "was a symbol of a free and democratic Russia."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused his Russian counterpart of murdering Navalny, and called for him to be "held accountable."

"Obviously, Navalny was killed by Putin, like so many thousands of others. Putin doesn't care who dies and seeks to maintain his position," he said during a joint press briefing with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin.

Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the U.K.'s Chatham House think tank, said nobody should be surprised by the news "least of all Navalny himself."

"After all, Russia tried to kill him once, and then he chose to go back for more," Giles told Newsweek.

"Russia's indifference to its international reputation is highlighted by the irony of this news coming immediately after Tucker Carlson's propaganda tour, lauding it as a progressive, modern state where people would want to live," he said.

What's Next?

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has called on Russia to "answer all the serious questions about the circumstances of his death."

"We need to establish all the facts," he said.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Putin was informed of Navalny's death, and that the prison service will investigate the matter in line with routine procedures.

"Short-term, this is a blow for the Russian opposition," Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist from the University of Chicago, told Newsweek.

"Navalny was the only major Russian politician to condemn Putin's war and the only politician with such views with millions of followers across Russia."

Long-term, news of his death is "just another sign of how degenerate, vile, and stupid Putin's regime is," said Sonin.

He added: "This means that they will never be able to stop the war-time regressions while they are in power, which dooms them to an eventual end like that of Hitler or the USSR."

Update 2/16/24, 7:56 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information and to note that Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.