Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said on Thursday that Russian authorities have not provided a convincing explanation for his death in a penal colony six months ago.
In a video message on X, Navalnaya said she had received a three-page document stating that Navalny’s death was not the result of a crime and therefore there were no grounds for a criminal investigation.
Navalny died on February 16 in a Siberian penal colony in the Arctic Circle, where he was serving a 19-year prison sentence on what he described as politically motivated charges.
The prominent activist and critic of President Vladimir Putin survived a 2020 poisoning attack with the nerve agent Novichok after flying to Germany for treatment. He was arrested upon his return to Russia in January 2021. A series of trials followed.
The official document from the Russian authorities was published by Navalny’s team on social networks. It attributes his death to a “combined illness” including a gallbladder infection, a hernia and a staphylococcal infection, with cardiac arrhythmia that ultimately led to death.
“When I first saw these pathetic three pages, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Navalnaya said of the document. “It’s another pathetic attempt to cover up what really happened: a murder,” she said.
Navalnaya noted that one in three Russians had illnesses of the type described in the document, but did not die from them. Moreover, the rules stipulated that Navalny should have undergone a comprehensive medical examination upon entering the penal colony, which had not revealed any evidence of these ailments.
Leonid Volkov, an opposition activist close to Navalny, also criticized the official document, saying investigators had spent six months formulating their version and had come up with nothing, he wrote on Telegram.
