Navalny, 47, collapsed on the Kharp penal colony in northwestern Siberia, Russia’s jail service stated, including that he had began to really feel “unwell” after taking a stroll.

Over the years, Navalny’s well being declined as his function as Putin’s major rival grew. He was bodily attacked, arrested, harassed and, in 2020, poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent in a suspected assassination try.

The assault practically killed him, and he fell sick a number of occasions whereas in jail over the previous three years.

At effectively over 6 toes tall, Navalny was as soon as a towering presence. But as he campaigned towards corruption, violent assaults left him with lasting well being issues.

In 2017, shortly after his workforce launched a video accusing then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption, unidentified assailants threw inexperienced antiseptic in his face throughout a public look. The assault broken his proper eye, requiring surgery.

The most vital assault was the nerve agent poisoning. He was on a flight out of the town of Tomsk, the place he met with native activists, when he grew to become severely sick on the airplane. In a video taken by one other passenger and posted on-line, Navalny could possibly be heard crying out in ache.

The airplane made an emergency touchdown within the Siberian metropolis of Omsk, the place Navalny fell right into a coma. He was finally flown for therapy to Berlin, the place German authorities introduced he had been poisoned with the chemical nerve agent Novichok.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejecting Russian claims that poison could possibly be dominated out, stated a army hospital had discovered “unequivocal” proof of the agent and declared Navalny the “victim of a crime.”

Novichok is a category of chemical weapons developed by the Soviet Union. It disrupts communication between the muscle mass and nerves, blocking an enzyme the nervous system must perform. This sort of poison will be deadly, normally inflicting respiratory failure.

Navalny spent 5 months recuperating in Germany, relearning tips on how to stroll, converse and eat.

According to Robert Chilcott, a toxicology skilled on the University of Hertfordshire in Britain, there aren’t sufficient recognized instances of Novichok poisoning to say what the long-term well being impact is.

But there are most likely parallels with “classic” nerve brokers resembling sarin that may trigger cognitive impairment, harm to nerves outdoors the mind and spinal wire, and modifications to the immune system, Chilcott stated.

“There is certainly a possibility that prior exposure to a Novichok may have contributed to [Navalny’s] premature death,” Chilcott wrote in an e mail. “The likely conditions of his incarceration would certainly have been an aggravating factor.”

In 2021, Navalny returned to Russia, the place he was arrested quickly after he landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for violating parole in an earlier case.

Navalny remained imprisoned till his dying, first in detention facilities after which in Penal Colony No. 2, about 110 miles east of Moscow. There, guards saved Navalny and different prisoners awake intentionally in what amounted to torture, his lawyer Vadim Kobzev stated on the time.

In social media posts from that interval, Navalny stated that he was experiencing numbness in his proper leg and {that a} jail physician had given him Ibuprofen however no analysis. He would later go on a three-week starvation strike to protest his medical therapy in that facility, ending it solely after he was advised by civilian doctors that he could die.

Navalny continued to undergo extreme and acute ache in his abdomen and commenced having seizures, his attorneys and associates said last year.

Early final yr, he developed a cough and fever, prompting his spouse, Yulia Navalnaya, to publicly urge jail authorities to supply him with drugs. At the identical time, greater than 200 Russian docs signed a letter calling on Putin to “stop abusing” Navalny, whose well being they stated was being “deliberately harmed.”

By the time of his dying, his associates stated, he had been held for 300 days in solitary penalty cells for alleged infractions, including to the stress on his system. In April, he lost 17 pounds after a single stretch in a cramped cell the place he was allowed solely a e book and a cup.

“Regarding the blatant and very strange situation around Navalny’s health, with seizures that have never had any signs, we cannot rule out the possibility that he is simply being ‘slowly poisoned’ so that his health does not deteriorate dramatically, but gradually and steadily,” Kobzev posted on social media in April.

“This may sound delusional and paranoid to someone else,” he stated, “but not to Navalny after Novichok.”

In August, a closed courtroom convicted Navalny on a number of prices of funding and inciting “extremist” exercise and sentenced him to 19 years in a “special regime” penal colony, the highest-level safety jail within the Russian system.

Reserved for probably the most severe criminals, “special regime” colonies ban household visits and maintain the lights in jail cells on consistently.

In a social media put up after the decision was issued, Navalny stated he understood it was a life sentence. “I perfectly understand that, like many political prisoners, I am sitting on a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of life of this regime,” he wrote.

In December, Navalny’s workforce misplaced contact with him for a number of weeks as he was transferred into the brand new system, earlier than finally discovering him at Kharp, also called IK-3.

The Kharp jail, which dates to the Soviet-era Gulag system, is geographically remoted and positioned in a area recognized for its extreme climate.

Russian prisons have lengthy been criticized by human rights teams for widespread abuse, poor situations and lack of medical help. In its 2022 report on human rights in Russia, the State Department famous that there have been studies that jail authorities systematically tortured inmates, “in some cases resulting in death or suicide.”