Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest critic, died in jail on Friday, according to the Russian prison service.
Authorities said that Mr Navalny fell ill after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness.
At the time of his death, he was serving a 19-year prison sentence on charges of extremism that were widely regarded as politically motivated. He was moved to the Polar Wolf prison, in the Arctic Circle, last November.
Mr Navalny was first imprisoned in 2021, when he returned to Moscow from a hospital in Germany. The 47-year old had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning, which he blamed on Mr Putin.
His death quickly prompted accusations of political assassination. US President Joe Biden said that Russian authorities would “tell their own story”, but added: “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.
On Saturday, the foreign ministers of the G7 meanwhile issued a demand for answers around his death.
Mr Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, called the remarks from Western leaders “absolutely outrageous and absolutely unacceptable”.
Here we examine the many unanswered questions surrounding the death of Russia’s most significant opposition leader.
Why did the FSB visit Navalny’s cell days before his death?
Two days before Russian authorities announced Mr Navalny’s death, officers from the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, allegedly visited the remote prison.
Activists from Gulagu.net, a human rights organisation founded by the campaigner Vladimir Osechkin, say the visit was disclosed in a report by the local branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), and that the officers turned off some of the security cameras and listening equipment while at the prison.
Last year, a spokesperson for Mr Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation said that they believed he was being “administered low doses of poison” while in prison, and that he had lost more than a stone in 15 days.
Why was Mr Navalny out for a walk in the first place?
Gulagu.net also questioned the FSIN’s claim that Navalny was out walking.
The Polar Wolf prison is known for its harsh conditions and extremely remote location. It sits high in the Arctic Circle, some 1,200 miles from Moscow.
At the time of Mr Navalny’s alleged collapse, it would have been around -20C outside. The FSIN reported he was out walking for four hours, though there is no proof of that as the CCTV was offline.
In November 2022, Mr Navalny said in a statement published by his lawyers that he was suing the prison administration for refusing to give him winter boots so that he could go outside, according to the BBC.
How did Russia announce his death so quickly?
Gulagu.net has also raised suspicions about how quickly Mr Navalny’s death was announced.
In a timeline published by the human rights organisation, Mr Navalny died at 2.17pm local time. His death was announced two minutes later at 2.19pm in a FSIN press release, which laid out the alleged circumstances of his death.
A minute later, two state news agencies released the news on their feeds.
Three minutes after that, the FSIN said that Mr Navalny’s death was a result of a blood clot.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, was in front of cameras talking about Mr Navalny’s death by 2.30pm.
Gulagu.net said the fast pace of the announcement can “only mean one thing”.
“Everything was planned and coordinated in advance, right down to the press release. Second by second.”
Speaking to opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, an unnamed Polar Wolf prisoner claimed that inmates had been told of Mr Navalny’s death at 10am local time – giving authorities more than four hours to respond. These claims could not be verified.
What happened to his body?
After the prison service announced his death, his mother, Lyudmila, flew to the prison.
In a statement released to Reuters, Mr Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said his mother was given an official death notice when she arrived.
She was told his death was caused by “sudden death syndrome”, according to Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
“Sudden death syndrome”, according to the British Heart Foundation, is a name given to “sudden and unexpected deaths from cardiac arrest where the cause cannot be found”.
But there are also unanswered questions around the location of Mr Navalny’s body. The prison told his mother it had been taken to a nearby town, Salekhard, but the morgue was closed when she arrived there.
Yarmysh contacted the morgue, which said it did not have her son’s body. The morgue later told Reuters the body had not arrived.
Officials said later that they would not hand over the body until their investigations had been completed. But they had said earlier that the investigation had not found any traces of criminality, according to Reuters.
What does this mean for Russia?
Mr Navalny was Mr Putin’s fiercest critic, and for many embodied the hope of a better future in Russia. He attempted to face off against Mr Putin in an election in 2018, before he was barred by the electoral commission.
Protests have broken out in Russia since his death was announced, with more than 100 protesters arrested across the country. Demonstrators also took to the streets outside Russian embassies in a number of countries, including the UK.
His death has left Russia’s opposition with no obvious successor. Russians will go to the polls for a presidential election in March, and although three candidates have been approved to stand against Mr Putin, activists say their role is simple: to lose.
One mourner in Moscow told AFP: “Of course, Navalny was a symbol, first of all a symbol of opposition, a symbol of hope for some brighter future for Russia. There’s a feeling that with his death, this hope dies.”
