Alexei Navalny latest: Yulia Navalnaya calls for Putin to be held accountable for husband's death

Alexei Navalny, prominent Vladimir Putin critic and the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, has died in prison.

The Kremlin has been accused of a “brutal assassination” – a claim that the Russian government vehemently denies.

The 47-year-old was sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle on charges widely thought to be politically motivated.

Read the full story from The Independent.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was apparently in good spirits and cracking jokes at a court appearance the day before officials announced he died, according to a video that circulated online Friday.

During the Thursday court appearance, Navalny was joking with the judge, asking him to help him our financially since he was running out of money in his prison account due to fines.

“Your honour, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to ‘warm up’ my personal account, because I am running out of money,” the video shows him saying.

Read the full story from The Hill.

The attacks range from the exotic — poisoned by drinking polonium-laced tea or touching a deadly nerve agent — to the more mundane of getting shot at close range. Some take a fatal plunge from an open window.

Over the years, Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways.

Read the full story from AP.

US vice president Kamala Harris said the death of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony on Friday, if confirmed, would be a further sign of the brutality of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Reports of Navalny's death shook the annual Munich Security Conference where leaders are gathered to bolster unity in the midst of Russia's two-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

Read the full story from Reuters.

Alexei Navalny’s death shows the “weakness and rot at the heart” of the system Vladimir Putin has built, Antony Blinken has said.

The Russian president’s fiercest critic died in jail at the age of 47, the Siberian prison service announced on Friday 16 February.

World leaders, including the US secretary of state, reacted with outrage to the news.

Mr Blinken added that he and other US officials would be “talking to the many other countries concerned about Alexei Navalny, especially if these reports turn out to be true”.

Read the full story from The Independent.

Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees, who became friends with Alexei Navalny when they studied together at Yale University in the US, said he was “an incredible human being”.

He told Sky News: “Those of us who lived alongside and studied alongside Alexei… we’re just all really heartbroken about what’s happened.

Rees said he and fellow students had told Navalny to “think hard about not going back to Russia” when he began to uncover state corruption.

“He said ‘If I don’t go back they will tell the Russian people that I’m some American agent and they will undermine all the work that I’ve done’.

“He was fully aware of the level of threat he was being exposed to by what he was doing.

“He was a man who was willing to give his life for his country – as opposed to a president who was asking other people to give their lives for him.”

Rees said the families of he and Alexei Navalny would have barbecues together while studying in the US.

“He always had a wicked sense of humour,” he told Sky News.

“He joked about always sounding like the Terminator when he was speaking, and his English not being good enough.

“He was a physically big man, and I’ve watched his body wither over the years.

“We can see this is a result of years of Putin trying to eliminate somebody who was bringing truth to the Russian people.

“He’s succeeded, but let’s hope he doesn’t succeed in eliminating what he stood for.”

Alexei Navalny was the fiercest domestic opponent of president Vladimir Putin. His supporters said they could not confirm he was dead, but that if he was then they believed he had been killed by the state.

UK security minister Tom Tugendhat echoed this, saying Putin’s regime “murdered” Navalny “to silence him”. Foreign secretary Lord David Cameron added “no one should be in any doubt about the dreadful nature of Putin’s regime in Russia after what has just happened”.

Here's a breakdown of what we know - and don't know - about Navalny’s reported death.

Read the full story from Yahoo News.

“Nataliya, every time we meet you’re asking about the same thing: ‘What’s going to happen to Russia?’”

These were the words Alexei Navalny said to me during an interview at his office in Moscow in 2016, one of at least six I carried out with the opposition leader while he was still a free man.

Navalny was always the opposite of Vladimir Putin, the man he spent most of his life struggling against – witty, charming, and driven by a profound moral core.

Although my job was to remain impartial, his good nature often got the better of me.

Read the full story from The Telegraph.

Lord David Cameron said there should be “consequences” for Vladimir Putin as he blamed Alexei Navalny’s death on the “action that Putin’s Russia took”.

Speaking to broadcasters as he attends the Munich Security Conference, the Foreign Secretary said: “Alexei Navalny was an incredibly brave fighter against corruption and he gave up everything in campaigning for what he believed in, and my heart goes out to his wife and to his family.

“We should be clear about what has happened here. Putin’s Russia imprisoned him, trumped up charges against him, poisoned him, sent him to an Arctic penal colony and now he’s tragically died.”

“We should hold Putin accountable for this, and no one should be in any doubt about the dreadful nature of Putin’s regime in Russia after what has just happened.”

Asked whether there should be consequences, Lord Cameron said: “There should be consequences because there’s no doubt in my mind that this man was a brave fighter against corruption, for justice, for democracy, and look what Putin’s Russia did to him.

“They trumped up charges, they imprisoned him, they poisoned him, they sent him to an Arctic penal colony and he’s died, and that is because of the action that Putin’s Russia took.”

Security minister Tom Tugendhat said Vladimir Putin’s regime had “murdered” Alexei Navalny to silence him.

In a post on X, the minister said: “Navalny was a hero to Russians and many others. While some looked away, he spoke up about the lies and brutality of Putin’s regime.

“They murdered him to silence him. His courage lives on in those who reject Moscow’s dictatorship.”

In a heartbreaking post to Instagram thought to have been shared by his lawyer almost 6 months ago, Alexei Navalny said he hadn't spoken to his wife or children for more than a year and a half and wanted to see them. The accoutn also shared a throwback picture of the family in happier times.

Alexei Navalny has become the latest in a string of deaths of critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Over his more than two decades at the top of the Kremlin, a number of Mr Putin's opponents have suffered unfortunate fates - including being jailed, shot dead in the street, or poisoned with tea spiked with polonium-210.

Who are the people who have dared speak out against Mr Putin or defy the Kremlin, and where are they now?

Read the full story from Sky News.

Alexei Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya has called for the international community to unite and hold Vladimir Putin’s regime responsible in the wake of reports that her husband has died.

Speaking in Russian at the Munich Security Conference, she said: “Thank you for the conference organisers that gave me the main stage. You have all probably seen the terrible news that came in today.“I thought for a long time: ‘Is it worth me to come here or to fly to my children straight away?’ But then I thought: ‘What would Alexei do in my place?’ And I’m confident that he would be here, he would be on this stage,” she said, according to a translator.

“I don’t know whether to believe the news, the terrible news that we are receiving only from the state sources in Russia,” she said, adding that Mr Putin and his government are “always lying”.

“But if this is true, I would like that Putin and all his coterie, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will be accountable for what they’ve done to our country, to my family, and to my husband. They will be liable for that.

"That day will come very soon.“I would like to call upon the global community, everyone in this room, people around the world, that we would unite together and overcome that evil, overcome that terrible regime that is currently in Russia. That regime and Vladimir Putin have to be personally liable for all the horrible things they are doing to my country, to our country Russia in the last years.”

Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of British-Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza who is currently jailed in Siberia, said: “During a recent court hearing, Alexei looked well and was, as always, in good spirits.

“Having witnessed two assassination attacks on my husband, I respect his team’s decision to abstain from comments until they’ve been able to see Alexei.”

Rishi Sunak has paid tribute to the “fiercest advocate for Russian democracy” after the country’s prison agency said jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died.

The UK Prime Minister said the death of Mr Navalny, one of the most prominent and persistent critics of Vladimir Putin, was a “huge tragedy” for the people of Russia.

Moscow’s federal prison service said in a statement that the politician, 47, felt unwell after a walk on Friday and lost consciousness.

An ambulance arrived to try to rehabilitate him, but he died, the agency said.

There was no immediate confirmation of Mr Navalny’s death from his team.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the Prime Minister said: “This is terrible news.

“As the fiercest advocate for Russian democracy, Alexei Navalny demonstrated incredible courage throughout his life.

“My thoughts are with his wife and the people of Russia, for whom this is a huge tragedy.”

Tributes came from across the political spectrum in the UK, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer saying: “Alexei Navalny showed incredible, impossible courage in his fight for Russian democracy.

“His death is terrible news for the Russian people. My thoughts are with his friends and family, as well as his supporters across the world.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Putin’s despicable methods might be to kill his enemies, but he will never kill the light of freedom and democracy which Navalny has stood for so courageously.”

Navalny's death is "shocking" despite his health deteriorating for some time, Sky News reports.

Alexei Navalny, 47, became a leading figure among Russia's splintered opposition.

Supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who would one day be freed from jail to lead the country.

He earned admiration from many in Russian opposition circles for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he underwent treatment for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.

Read the full story from Reuters.

Speaking to the PA news agency, anti-Putin campaigner Bill Browder said of Alexei Navalny’s death: “I’m shocked. I’m completely shocked and devastated.

“And I feel terrible for his family and I feel terrible for all the people of Russia that were hoping there could be a brighter future through someone like him.

“It’s totally demoralising that Putin can feel so untouchable that he can kill somebody who is so important and so vital for Russia, and so well-known and believe that he can do it with impunity.”

Speaking about what Mr Navalny was like in person, Mr Browder said: “Alexei Navalny was the bravest person I’ve ever known.

“He was somebody who was completely ready to put his own life at risk for his country, and he has paid the ultimate price.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said Russia has some serious questions to answer over the death of Alexei Navalny.

Navalny, who was being held in the so-called 'Arctic Wolf' prison colony - widely considered to be one of the toughest jails in Russia - was handed a prison sentence in 2021 for a parole violation stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that has long been seen as an attempt to keep him out of politics - and indeed was quashed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the grounds he did not get a fair trial.

In 2017 Navalny was banned from running against Putin due to the alleged charges that had been levelled against him - which he once again denied.

Jailed in 2021 initially for less than three years, he was then sentenced to nine more years on contempt and fraud charges, and a further 19 years were added to his sentence on extremism charges.

The jail sentence was widely criticised, amid claims the charges were fabricated by the Kremlin in an attempt to prevent him from challenging Vladimir Putin and fighting for democracy.

Anti-Vladimir Putin campaigner Bill Browder said in a statement reported by PA after the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison was announced: “Let’s make no mistake, Putin assassinated Alexei Navalny.

“He did so because Alexei Navalny was brave enough to stand up to Putin.

“He did so because Navalny offered the Russian people an alternative to kleptocracy and repression.

“This is a tragic day for Navalny and his family, but also for Russia and the hope for a better future.”

There have been no official reports from the prison as to how Navalny died.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison on Friday, leveraged social media and fatigue with the Kremlin to rise to prominence.

He was for years the most prolific critic of President Vladimir Putin and his policies, returning to Russia after recovering from a near-fatal poisoning attack that his supporters say was orchestrated by the Kremlin.

He was immediately imprisoned on his arrival and on Friday could not be revived by medics when he lost consciousness after going for a walk, the prison service said.

During his time behind bars, the 47-year-old appeared in grainy videos from makeshift court hearings, daring to slam Putin over his offensive in Ukraine.

Read the full story from AFP.

In a post on social media about the death of Alexei Navalny, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “This is terrible news. As the fiercest advocate for Russian democracy, Alexei Navalny demonstrated incredible courage throughout his life.

“My thoughts are with his wife and the people of Russia, for whom this is a huge tragedy.”

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died aged 47 in a penal colony, the country’s prison service said on Friday.

The prison authorities claimed in a statement that Mr Navalny felt unwell after a walk on Friday and lost consciousness.

An ambulance arrived to try to rehabilitate him, but he died, it further alleged.

Read the full story from the Evening Standard.