Russian authorities have declined to launch a criminal investigation into the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who passed away in an Arctic penal colony, his widow Yulia Navalnaya revealed on Thursday.
Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he had condemned as politically motivated. According to authorities, Navalny fell ill after a walk, but they have provided few details about his death.
Officials have maintained that Navalny died of natural causes shortly after the walk and have strongly denied any involvement in both his poisoning and his death.
In a video posted on social media Thursday, Navalnaya said she received a letter from Russian investigators outlining the supposed cause of her husband’s death. According to the letter, Navalny succumbed to a combination of “a dozen different diseases,” ultimately dying from arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat.
Navalnaya disputed the official account, asserting that her husband had shown no signs of heart disease while he was alive. She described the letter as “a lie.”
“They are hiding what really happened that day,” she said. “When Alexei became ill, he wasn’t taken to the medical unit but back to the punishment cell.”
There, she claimed, Navalny “died alone.”
Navalnaya also stated that the document informed her there would be no criminal investigation into her husband’s death, as no crime was deemed to have occurred.
“As long as Putin is in power, there will be no investigation,” she said, vowing to continue seeking the truth about the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death.
