Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who was the main domestic opponent of Vladimir Putin, died in a Siberian prison.

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny died in prison, the Federal Penitentiary Service announced on Friday.

"Navalny fell ill after a walk. The arriving doctors declared his death"

says the announcement.

According to FSZIN, the detainee fell ill on February 16 in penal camp No. 3 in the Yamal-Nyenyec Autonomous District.

The facility's medical staff immediately arrived on the scene and called an emergency rescue team. The doctors tried to revive the opposition politician, but they were unsuccessful.

Navalny's defense lawyer said in connection with the death that he would refrain from commenting for the time being.

According to the family's decision, I will not comment on anything at all. We're sorting things out now. Alexey's lawyer was with him on Wednesday. Everything was fine then

Leonid Solovyov, Navalny's lawyer, told the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, announced that prison services were investigating the circumstances of Navalny's death and that they currently had no information on the cause of death.

Doctors must find out the causes of Navalny's death.

This is what spokesman Dmitry Peskov said about the death of the opposition politician, reports the British news agency BBC. Peskov emphasized: Russian President Vladimir Putin has already been informed of the death of .

Navalny became known as a critic of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Western laboratories, he was poisoned during a trip to Siberia in August 2020. After receiving medical treatment abroad, he returned to Moscow in January 2021, where he was arrested and sentenced to serve a previous suspended prison sentence for fraud after violating the terms of his parole, according to authorities. After that, new proceedings were initiated against him, including terrorism.

In June 2021, a court banned the operation of Navalny's regional offices and anti-corruption foundation.

On August 4 of last year, the Moscow City Court declared the following charges proven against Navalny: creation of an extremist group, financing of extremist activity, incitement to extremism, creation of a non-profit organization that violates the rights of citizens, involvement of minors in dangerous acts and rehabilitation of Nazism, although the the convicted person was released from serving the sentence for the last three charges due to the statute of limitations. The Russian oppositionist had to serve the sentence together with the nine-year prison sentence imposed on him in 2021 for fraud and contempt of court.

Navalny's death occurred shortly before the Russian presidential election on March 17, in which Putin is running for his fifth term.

MTI / Hungarian Nation

Front page photo: In the photo published by the Babuskinsk District Court, Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny attends a hearing in the Moscow courtroom in the defamation case against him on February 12, 2021. Navalny called a World War II Russian veteran and others who appeared in a commercial promoting the previous year's constitutional amendment lackeys, traitors and a disgrace to the country. MTI/EPA/Babuskinsk District Court