“Russia is Responsible”: Alexey Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s Fiercest Critic, Reported Dead in Arctic Penal Colony

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny—a fierce critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin—has died at 47, the state prison service announced Friday. “I want Putin and his entire circle to know that they’ll bear responsibility for what they did with our country and my family and my husband,” Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the anti-corruption activist, said in remarks at the Munich Security Conference Friday, noting that she had not yet confirmed her husband’s death.

Word of Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic penal colony sparked immediate international outrage, including in the United States, where tensions with Russia continue to increase. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” President Joe Biden said Friday. “People across Russia and around the world are mourning Navalny today, because he was so many things that Putin was not,” he added. “If confirmed, this would be a further sign of Putin’s brutality,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in her own statement at the Munich Security Conference conference. “Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Friday, “His death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built.” 

It’s unclear if or how the US and the West will act in response to Navalny’s death if confirmed. During a summit in Geneva in 2021, Biden said he “made it clear” to Putin that there would be “devastating” consequences for Russia if Navalny died in Kremlin custody. But the reported death comes at a particularly precarious moment: This month marks the second anniversary of Putin’s war of aggression on Ukraine, and critical US support for Kyiv has been put in question by the GOP.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has repeatedly praised Putin and other authoritarians, said at a campaign rally last week that he would “encourage” Russia to attack “delinquent” NATO allies—prompting blowback from the Biden administration, Democrats, and European leaders. Some GOP lawmakers downplayed the comments, suggesting he was not speaking “literally.” But Trump quickly doubled down on his threat, recounting what he told a NATO ally, “Nobody’s paying their bills”: “I’m not going to protect you.”

House Republicans have followed his lead:  Marjorie Taylor Greene even threatened to introduce a motion to vacate Mike Johnson if he introduces a vote on the foreign aid package for Ukraine. The conservative media and ecosystem has muddied the waters, too: Some on the right, including former Representative Lee Zeldin, likened Navalny’s imprisonment and reported death to the felony charges Trump is facing as a result of his hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, his handling of classified documents, and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Even more egregious was former Fox host Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Putin, which even the Russian dictator said was too soft. Asked later why he did not broach Russia’s human rights abuses, including the treatment of Navalny, the crackdown on Putin’s opposition, and the use of political assassination, Carlson was blase.

“Leadership requires killing people,” Carlson said.

Navalny, an anti-corruption crusader, was Russia’s leading Putin critic. In 2020, he was nearly killed after being poisoned with a nerve agent. He returned to Russia from Germany months later, in 2021, and was imprisoned on politically motivated “sham” charges that were sharply criticized by international human rights observers. He continued his activism against Putin—who will essentially run unopposed for a fifth term in March after amending the constitution to allow him to stay in power until 2036—from prison and was moved last year to a remote penal colony in Siberia, alarming his supporters and the international community.

Navalny was last seen Thursday, joking during an appearance before a judge. His mother said Friday that he had been “alive, healthy and happy” when she last saw him earlier in the week. The journalist Julia Ioffe wrote Friday morning that she had seen Navalny’s wife the previous evening; Navalnaya said “she had finally figured out what to tell people when they asked about” her husband, Ioffe wrote: “‘He’s doing well under bad circumstances.’” Speaking before the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Navalnaya said: “I thought, ‘Should I stand here before you, or should I go back to my children?’ And then I thought, ‘What would Alexei have done in my place?’ And I’m sure he would have been standing here on this stage.”

Navalny had said as much in a 2022 documentary, urging supporters to “not give up” the fight against Putin’s regime. “You’re not allowed to give up,” he said. “If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”