Alexei Navalny has died in prison, according to Russian authorities. He was one of President Putin’s most famous critics, exposing corruption at the heart of Russian power for more than a decade.

Navalny rose to prominence in the late 2000s by becoming a minority shareholder in large Russian companies and asking questions about their finances. He documented his findings about alleged malpractice and corruption on his blog.

He formed the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011 and became a key protest leader after Putin's United Russia party won an election marred by allegations of fraud. He was arrested and jailed for 15 days in December that year.

He was briefly jailed again in 2013 after being accused of fraud, but was unexpectedly released to campaign for the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, in which he finished runner-up behind a Putin ally. He went to vote in the election with his wife Yulia and their two children.

He continued to lead nationwide protests and was often detained by police. He tried to stand for president in the 2018 elections but was barred from doing so because of his fraud conviction.

In August 2020, Navalny collapsed on a flight over Siberia and was rushed to hospital in Omsk. Tests later showed that he was poisoned by Novichok, a nerve agent commonly used in the Soviet era. The Kremlin denied being responsible for the attack.

He was treated in Berlin and flew back to Russia in January 2021 with his wife. He was detained on his arrival in Moscow for breaching the conditions of a suspended sentence while recuperating in Germany.

He was sent to prison in February 2021 and his two-and-a-half-year sentence was upped to nine years in 2023 after a conviction on new charges of embezzlement and contempt of court. He was also given an additional 19 years at a "special regime" facility on extremism charges.

After not being seen for two weeks, he surfaced again at a penal colony in the North Arctic at the end of 2023. Officials said the 47-year-old died there on 16 February after feeling unwell.

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