Alexei Navalny is seen in 2012 behind the bars in a police van after he was detained throughout protests in Moscow a day after Putin’s inauguration.

Sergey Ponomarev/AP

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Sergey Ponomarev/AP

Alexei Navalny is seen in 2012 behind the bars in a police van after he was detained throughout protests in Moscow a day after Putin’s inauguration.

Sergey Ponomarev/AP

MOSCOW — Alexei Navalny, the fiercest foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin who crusaded towards official corruption and staged huge anti-Kremlin protests, died in jail Friday, Russia’s jail company stated. He was 47.

The Federal Prison Service stated in a press release that Navalny felt unwell after a stroll on Friday and misplaced consciousness. An ambulance arrived to attempt to rehabilitate him, however he died.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh stated on X, the platform previously referred to as Twitter, that the politician’s staff had no affirmation of his dying to this point and that his lawyer was touring to the city the place he was held.

Navalny, who was serving a 19-year sentence on expenses of extremism, was moved in December from his former jail within the Vladimir area of central Russia to to a “special regime” penal colony — the very best safety degree of prisons in Russia — above the Artic Circle.

His allies decried the switch to a colony within the city of Kharp, within the Yamalo-Nenets area about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, as yet one more try to power Navalny into silence.

The distant area is infamous for lengthy and extreme winters. Kharp is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coal mines have been a part of the Soviet gulag prison-camp system.

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 towards official corruption, organized main anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public workplace.

He had since acquired three jail sentences, all of which he rejected as politically motivated.