Putin laughs minutes after he was knowledgeable of Alexei Navalny’s dying

As the world reacted with anger to the information right this moment that Alexei Navalny had died in a Russian jail, shameless Vladimir Putin was seen grinning from ear to ear.

Pictures confirmed the 71-year-old President and former KGB spy animated and merrily assembly employees at a manufacturing facility in Chelyabinsk, within the Ural mountains.

Despite the surprising information, the Russian despot – who’s on a two-day go to to the area – toured the power earlier than taking the microphone and addressing a crowd, seemingly unfazed by the mounting worldwide outcry.

Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov had earlier confirmed that Putin had been knowledgeable concerning the dying of his fierce critic, however in footage of the assembly revealed after the announcement, the Russian chief made no point out of Navalny.

Whenever Putin did not often discuss Navalny, he made it a degree to by no means point out the activist by title, referring to him as ‘that particular person’ or related wording, in an obvious effort to decrease his significance.

Peskov instructed reporters he didn’t know any additional particulars about the reason for dying.

Russian authorities mentioned Navalny – who crusaded in opposition to official corruption and staged large anti-Kremlin protests – died on Friday within the Arctic jail colony the place he was serving a 19-year sentence. 

The Federal Prison Service mentioned in an announcement right this moment Navalny felt unwell after a stroll and misplaced consciousness. An ambulance arrived to attempt to save him, to no avail. 

The dying of Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, robs the disparate Russian opposition of its most brave chief as Putin prepares for an election which is able to preserve the previous KGB spy in energy till at the least 2030.

There are actually no opposition leaders of such prominence left in Russia. For some younger city Russians, Navalny additionally supplied hope of an alternate future to Putin, who has served as Russia’s paramount chief longer than anybody since Josef Stalin.

As Putin toured the manufacturing facility, condemnation was flooding in from world leaders.

Dissidents and Western officers blamed Moscow for the 47-year-old’s dying, which adopted months of deteriorating well being in harsh detention circumstances. 

Latvia’s president accused his Russian counterpart of ‘murdering’ Navalny, a sentiment that was shared by a number of different senior politicians and commentators.

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson mentioned there was ‘little doubt’ that Navalny had been ‘put to dying’ by Putin ‘just because he had the braveness to oppose the Russian tyrant.’

‘With this homicide Putin plunges new depths of depravity and drags his nation additional into the darkness,’ he mentioned.

‘Alexei Navalny was tortured and tormented for 3 years… Murder was added to Alexei Navalny’s sentence,’ Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov was quoted as saying by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess grand grasp, mentioned Putin ‘murdered’ Navalny ‘slowly and publicly in jail’, whereas Nobel Peace winner Muratov additionally described Navalny’s dying as ‘homicide’.

Russian author Akunin Navalny mentioned along with his dying, Navalny ‘has turn into immortal’.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak paid tribute to the ‘fiercest advocate for Russian democracy’, saying Navalny was a distinguished and protracted critic of Putin who had ‘demonstrated unimaginable braveness all through his life’.

France mentioned the opposition chief had paid along with his life for resisting ‘oppression’, whereas German Chancellor Olaf Scholz mentioned Navalny ‘paid for his braveness along with his life.’

The EU mentioned it held President Putin’s Russia solely chargeable for the dying.

Navalny’s spouse Yulia Navalnaya, in the meantime, known as for the worldwide neighborhood to unite and maintain Putin’s regime chargeable for her husband’s dying. 

Speaking in Russian on the Munich Security Conference, she mentioned: ‘Thank you for the convention organisers that gave me the primary stage. You have all most likely seen the horrible information that got here in right this moment.

‘I believed for a very long time: ‘Is it price me to return right here or to fly to my youngsters immediately?’ But then I believed: ‘What would Alexei do in my place?’ And I’m assured that he could be right here, he could be on this stage,’ she mentioned.

‘I do not know whether or not to imagine the information, the horrible information that we’re receiving solely from the state sources in Russia,’ she mentioned, including that Putin and his authorities are ‘all the time mendacity’.

‘But if that is true, I would love that Putin and all his coterie, Putin’s associates, his authorities to know that they are going to be accountable for what they’ve completed to our nation, to my household, and to my husband. 

‘They might be chargeable for that. That day will come very quickly.

‘I wish to name upon the worldwide neighborhood, everybody on this room, folks all over the world, that we might unite collectively and overcome that evil, overcome that horrible regime that’s at the moment in Russia.

That regime and Vladimir Putin should be personally chargeable for all of the horrible issues they’re doing to my nation, to our nation Russia within the final years.’

The Kremlin later slammed the Western statements on Navalny’s dying as ‘completely unacceptable’, in keeping with Russian state media.

There had been some claims tonight that Navalny had died hours earlier than the official time of dying introduced by the Russian authorities.

Journalist Sergei Dobrynin, of the Moscow bureau of Radio Liberty, instructed Nemalevich Telegram channel: ‘Navalny wrote from Kharp [where his jail was located] that walks within the punishment cell start at 6:30am.’

Official accounts mentioned he felt ailing after his stroll – at round 1pm, and that he was confirmed lifeless at 2.21pm native time in his Siberian jail. 

‘I believe he died a lot earlier – that is why they managed to arrange a launch and ship an ambulance to verify his dying,’ mentioned the reporter.

The suggestion is that his dying was truly quickly after an early morning stroll, and the authorities waited hours to announce it as they ready a information administration technique.

Meanwhile, Moscow warned folks in opposition to taking to the streets to protest.

Images on social media confirmed folks laying flowers at memorials to victims of political repression in honour of Navalny.

The prosecutor’s workplace within the Russian capital mentioned that it was conscious of calls on-line ‘to participate in a mass rally within the centre of Moscow’ and mentioned it was ‘essential to warn in opposition to violating the regulation’.

Protests are unlawful in Russia underneath strict anti-dissent legal guidelines, with authorities having clamped down significantly harshly on rallies in help of Navalny.

In Moscow, dozens laid pink and white roses on the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of Soviet period repression reverse the headquarters of Russia’s FSB safety companies – the previous dwelling of the scary Soviet secret police.

At least one particular person was detained for holding up a placard that appeared to say ‘murderers’ on it, in keeping with a video posted by the unbiased Sota Telegram channel.

A handful of individuals had been additionally pictured gathering to put flowers at a bridge subsequent to the Kremlin the place Putin critic Boris Nemtsov was killed in 2015.

And Police had been filmed dispersing individuals who had gathered within the snow at a memorial within the central metropolis of Kazan.

Some bigger demonstrations additionally befell in Tbilisi, Yerevan and Belgrade – dwelling to vital populations of Russians who fled the nation following Moscow’s navy offensive on Ukraine.

Navalny had been in jail in Russia since January 2021 when he was sentenced to a jail colony for ‘extremism’. 

That time period was prolonged to 19 years in August final yr. That was simply the newest in a string of jail phrases for costs that included embezzlement.

He had spent most of his detention on the IK-6 penal colony within the Vladimir area, some 155 miles east of Moscow. 

In December he disappeared for greater than two weeks. 

At the tip of that month it was revealed that he had been moved to the infamous IK-3 colony at Kharp within the Arctic.

Navalny mentioned on social media on December 26 that he was ‘tremendous’ after a ‘fairly exhausting’ 20-day switch to the distant jail contained in the Arctic Circle.

IK-3 is greater than 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow. Its title means Northern Lights, however its nickname is ‘Polar Wolf’.

It was constructed within the Nineteen Sixties on the location of a camp that was a part of the Stalin-era labour camp community, referred to as the Gulag. 

It can home as much as 1,020 prisoners. Inmates are put to work treating reindeer skins.

Navalny mobilised big anti-government protests earlier than being jailed in 2021, after surviving an try to assassinate him by poisoning.

Starting out as an anti-corruption campaigner in 2007, Navalny led big protests in 2011-12 and obtained his first conviction in 2013 for embezzlement. 

He denied the costs.

After being barred from the 2018 presidential election, Navalny was hospitalised in Siberia in August 2020 after shedding consciousness throughout a flight.

He was transferred to a Berlin hospital the place exams confirmed he was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. 

Navalny blamed Putin for the poisoning, however the Kremlin denied the declare.