Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said on Feb. 16 that she does not know whether to believe news on Navalny's death, as they are coming from Russian state-controlled media.
"We cannot believe Putin and his government; they are lying constantly," Navalnaya said at the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
"But if it is true, I want (Russian dictator Vladimir) Putin, his friends, and his government to be punished for what they've done to our country, to my family, and to my husband. They will be brought to justice," Navalnaya said, adding that their day will come soon.
She appealed to world leaders to help fight Putin's regime, stressing that the Russian dictator holds personal responsibility for all atrocities carried out by the Russian government.
Russian media reported on Feb. 16 that Russian opposition leader Navalny died in prison. Navalny was being held in a penal colony in Russia's far northern Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District.
According to the prison service, Navalny supposedly lost consciousness and could not be revived.
The penal colony that Navalny was held in is located in a remote settlement north of the Arctic Circle, with "tough conditions" and limited access to letter delivery, according to Zhdanov, the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation established by Navalny.
Navalny was previously held in the IK-6 Melekhovo high-security prison in Russia's Vladimir Oblast.
Navalny had been serving a 2.5-year prison sentence since 2021 and a separate 9-year sentence on fraud charges since 2022.
A Russian court also sentenced Navalny to 19 years in a maximum security prison in August 2023 on extremism charges for creating the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
All these cases have been recognized as politically motivated and fabricated by international human rights organizations and governments.
Navalny was poisoned in Russia in 2020 and flown for treatment in Germany. German doctors said he had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent — a chemical weapon produced by the Russian government.
The Insider, Bellingcat, CNN, and Der Spiegel published an investigation according to which Navalny had been poisoned by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service. They also identified the agents' names.
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