Alexei Navalny is dead, spokeswoman confirms

KHARP, Russia (Reuters) -Alexei Navalny’s spokeswoman on Saturday confirmed that Russia’s most prominent opposition leader was dead and demanded that the Russian authorities hand over the body to his family immediately.

Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said.

Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said that an official death notice had been given to Navalny’s mother, Lydumila. The time of death, she said, was 2:17 p.m. local time (0917 GMT) on Feb. 16, according to the notice.

“We demand that Alexei Navalny’s body be given to his family immediately,” Yarmysh said.

Until now, the prison service statement on Friday had been the only official word on the death of Navalny, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin who had been serving a long prison sentence.

Yarmysh, writing on social media platform X, said an employee of the prison had said that Navalny’s body had been taken to Salekhard, the town near the prison complex, by Russian investigators, who were conducting “research”.

But an employee at the only morgue in Salekhard told Reuters that Navalny’s body had not arrived.

“The investigative committee has a million options,” the employee, who did not give their name, said, listing other cities in the region – Labytnangi, Nadym and Urengoy – where Navalny’s body could have been sent to.

“In Salekhard, we have the only morgue,” he said. “I have not received anyone, no bodies…no papers.”

Asked whether a body could have arrived before he started his shift at 8 a.m., the employee said: “No one handed me anything. I think if such a body had been delivered to us, I would have been told immediately.”

Lyudmila Navalnaya travelled on Saturday to the prison where her son had been held , accompanied by Navalny’s lawyer, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported.

The IK-3 penal colony in Kharp is situated in the Arctic Circle, around a one-hour drive from Salekhard, the administrative capital of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.

(Reporting by ReutersAdditional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov in TbilisiWriting by Alexander Marrow in LondonEditing by Guy Faulconbridge and Frances Kerry)