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On 16 February, Russia’s federal penitentiary service introduced the demise of Alexei Navalny, the main political opponent of Vladimir Putin, within the Siberian penal colony the place he had been held since August 2023. The reason for demise just isn’t but identified. Navalny, 47, had been sentenced to 19 years’ imprisonment for “extremism” and 9 years’ imprisonment for “embezzlement” and “contempt of courtroom”, fees thought of political in nature. Navalny’s demise comes a month earlier than Russia’s presidential election, from which most of Putin’s opponents have been ousted.
In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised in Siberia after being poisoned with novichok – an agent generally utilized by each Soviet and post-Soviet Russian operatives – as he left a gathering. Handled in Berlin, he was arrested on his return to Moscow in January 2021 and sentenced to 2 and a half years in jail for violating the phrases of a earlier sentence for embezzlement.
These near Navalny frequently denounced the circumstances by which he was detained. Navalny’s investigations into the corruption of the Russian regime and its leaders clearly irritated the Kremlin, and he accused them of desirous to eliminate a hard adversary. This accusation is now echoed by most Western leaders, who maintain the Russian authorities chargeable for his demise. Navalny is the most recent in a protracted record of Putin critics to vanish in murky circumstances, together with Anna Politikovskaya, Boris Nemtsov, Natalia Estemirova, Alexander Litvinenko and lots of others.
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