“Your Honor, I'm waiting — I'll send you my personal account number, so you can use the huge federal judge's salary to support my personal account,” he said, laughing.
The Russian opposition leader and President Vladimir Putin's biggest rival was serving a decades-long prison sentence in a grueling penal colony above the Arctic Circle on charges including “extremism” and “embezzlement.”
Navalny's last
Prison colony
Navalny's last prison colony
“I ran out of money,” Navalny said with a smile in the video. “And thanks to your decisions, it will run out faster. So please send me something. And you guys in the detention centers are participating as well.”
Prison authorities reported Friday that Navalny “felt unwell” after walking, and “almost immediately lost consciousness.” They said that the medical team failed to revive him.
In the days before his death was announced, reports indicated that Navalny appeared in relatively good health.
During Thursday's hearing, Navalny appeared “fine,” the court told Russian news channel RBC. “He did not express any complaints about his health, and spoke actively and presented arguments in defense of his position,” the outlet reported.
Navalny's lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, told Novaya Gazeta shortly after news broke that a lawyer had visited the activist on Wednesday. “Everything was fine then.”
Navalny has been detained in Russia since 2021, when he returned home after surviving a 2020 poisoning attempt that the Foreign Ministry said was carried out by Russian state agents. Throughout his detention, he went on hunger strikes and was placed in solitary confinement Limited contact with his family.
