Russia on Friday rejected "totally unacceptable"
Western accusations
about the death of Alexei Navalny amid strong calls for explanations from the Kremlin about the sudden death of Vladimir Putin's fiercest opponent.
"He was obviously murdered," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said bluntly.
The opposition leader's wife, Yulia Naválnaya, assured that Putin and his entourage
"will be brought to justice and that day will come soon."
While questions about Nalvany's death were repeated against Russia, from the White House to NATO, Moscow authorities warned the population this Friday not to go out on the streets to protest, hours after the announcement of the death of the prominent opponent. .
"Organizing or holding unauthorized rallies, convening them and participating in them is an administrative offense," the Moscow prosecutor's office warned in a statement.
Marches in Belgrade: "Putin is a murderer."
Photo: EFE
A massive demonstration in Moscow
The prosecutor's office noted that it "considers it necessary to warn about the violation of the law," referring to
several online calls to organize "a mass demonstration in the center of Moscow."
The prison service of the Arctic region of Yamal announced this Friday the death of Navalny, 47, the most prominent critic of the Kremlin, who was serving a 19-year sentence after being convicted of "extremism", fraud and other causes that he considered "politics."
Putin in trouble?
The sudden death in prison of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, confirmed by the prison services, puts the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, in trouble, who declared war on the democratic opposition many years ago.
Navalny's death took the Russian leader by surprise in the middle of an electoral work trip to the city of Chelyabinsk, where
he did not comment on the matter.
Sudden death
The penitentiary services explained that on Friday, after taking a walk in the IK-3 penitentiary in the Arctic town of Jarp (Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district), where this Friday the thermometers marked
more than 20 degrees below zero,
the opposition politician " "he felt bad" and "lost consciousness."
Emergency medical teams immediately responded to the call from the prison and tried to revive him
"for more than half an hour,"
according to hospital services in the town of Labitnangui, located in the Arctic Circle.
"However, the patient died," they told the Interfax agency.
Subsequently, the penitentiary services announced the dispatch of a commission of prison officials and doctors from their central apparatus in Moscow to clarify the causes and circumstances surrounding the death of the most famous prisoner in this country.
Navalni's health had already sparked great concern when the opponent went on a hunger strike between March and April 2021 in protest against the refusal to be treated by doctors outside of prison services, weeks in which he lost a lot of weight.
Arctic cold and punishment cells
As in the times of the Soviet GULAG or the tsarist katorgas, Navalny was transferred in December from a prison less
than 200 kilometers from Moscow
to another prison in the Arctic, on the other side of the Ural mountain range.
The reason, according to the opposition, was
his decision to launch a national campaign against Putin's re-election
in the March presidential elections shortly after he registered his candidacy to continue another six years in the Kremlin.
The transfer to another prison, commonly known as "etapirovanie", is a process in which
the prisoner is held incommunicado for weeks
, which represents
brutal physical and psychological exhaustion
for the detainee, according to human rights organizations.
Their destination, a prison named after "Polar Wolf", is considered one
of the most distant prisons from civilization in all of Russia
, as it is located almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow or about 45 hours by train from the capital. Russian.
"Alexei Navalny was subjected to torment and torture for three years. As Navalny's doctor told me: the body cannot bear that," wrote Dmitri Muratov, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2021.
The 'Nóvaya Gazeta' journalist reported that "murder was added to the opposition leader's prison sentence
"
and he was convinced that his death
"is a direct consequence" of his 27 stays "in punishment cells"
for different infractions.
With agency information