Photo Credit: France 24
Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) mourns the death of the courageous Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny who died on February 16, 2024 in a penal colony near the arctic circle where he was imprisoned. Navalny was a fearless critic of Vladimir Putin and his increasingly authoritarian regime, exposing its corruption and condemning the invasion of Ukraine. He had been imprisoned since February of 2021 where he had been subjected to torture and repeated periods of solitary confinement. In August 2020, in an earlier effort to silence and kill him, Navalny had been poisoned with the nerve agent, Novichok.
ESW mourns the loss of this great hero and condemns the ongoing authoritarian rule in Russia.