Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny dead

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is dead, the prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region where he had been serving his sentence said on February 16.

Navalny had been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests.

He has since received three prison terms, rejecting all the charges against him as politically motivated. Until December 2023, Navalny was serving time at Penal Colony No. 6 in the Vladimir region, and officials there regularly placed him in a punishment cell for alleged minor infractions. He spent months in isolation.