The Kremlin’s number 1 opponent, Alexeï Navalny, died this Friday, February 16, according to the authorities, in his Arctic prison, a death which comes one month before the presidential election which should once again cement Vladimir’s power Poutine. While the international community points to the responsibility of the Russian president, here are the three questions that arise after the disappearance of the historic enemy of the Kremlin.
How did he die ?
The Russian authorities provided almost no details on the conditions of Navalny’s death, limiting themselves to two terse press releases to ensure that they had done everything to resuscitate the opponent, in fragile health, after feeling unwell. “On February 16, 2024, in penitentiary center No. 3, prisoner Navalny AA felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness,” said the FSIN (Russian Prison Service) of the Arctic region of Yamal, assuring that emergency services had tried to save him.
“All the necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not give a positive result. The emergency doctors noted the death of the patient. The causes of death are being established,” he said. , in this press release. “The doctors who arrived on site continued the resuscitation operations that had already been carried out by the prison doctors. They continued them for more than 30 minutes. However, the patient died,” said a public hospital in the city. of Labytnangui, located near the penal colony where Alexeï Navalny was imprisoned. The Russian opponent had participated the day before by video at two hearings before a court in the Vladimir region, and had not expressed any complaints regarding his health, the state news agency Ria Novosti said.
What was his state of health in detention?
The time spent behind bars had serious consequences on his health. The 47-year-old activist, number one enemy of the Russian president, was serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism” in a remote penal colony in the Arctic, nicknamed “Polar Wolf”, an establishment inherited from the Soviet Gulag. He arrived in this new detention center located in Yamalo-Nenetsia at the end of December, at the end of a long transfer during which his relatives had received no news, causing fears abroad.
During various hearings in trials in which he participated by video in recent months, Navalny, a tall blond with piercing blue eyes, appeared thin and aged. Placed in solitary confinement, the opponent released a photo at the start of the year of the tiny fenced prison courtyard in which he could walk very early in the morning, when the temperatures were very low. Alexeï Navalny, with a readily ironic tone in his messages, spoke in January of the “wonderful fresh air that blows in the courtyard despite the concrete wall”, noting that the mercury had not fallen below -32 degrees Celsius.
He narrowly survived in 2020 a poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok while he was on the electoral campaign in Siberia, which he and his supporters had attributed to the Kremlin. Transferred in a coma to Germany for treatment, he chose to return to Russia after his convalescence, and was immediately arrested. This poisoning, a hunger strike and repeated stays in solitary confinement had left a physical mark on him.
What remains of the opposition to Putin?
In a message on February 1 posted by his team on social networks, he called for demonstrations throughout Russia during the presidential election scheduled for March 15 to 17 and which should allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power until 2030. at least. The Russian president’s victory seems assured because opponents, led by Alexeï Navalny, have been imprisoned or driven into exile in recent years, and repression has further increased since the start of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022. The best known of them is Vladimir Kara-Mourza, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence and who was poisoned twice. He also suffers from serious health problems in detention.
Another opponent with a certain notoriety is Ilia Iachine. He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for denouncing “the murder of civilians” in the Ukrainian town of Boutcha, near kyiv. Other critics of Vladimir Putin have been assassinated. Boris Nemtsov was shot and killed at the foot of the Kremlin walls in February 2015, an assassination which has never been clarified.