Refusal to open case on Navalny's death published

FBK Director Ivan Zhdanov published the Investigative Committee’s refusal to initiate a criminal case into the death of Alexei Navalny.

The document claims that on February 16, Navalny "felt a sharp deterioration in his health" in the exercise yard of Correctional Colony No. 3 in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District and informed the duty officer, who informed the head of the medical unit about this. An ambulance team arrived, but attempts to resuscitate the oppositionist were unsuccessful, and doctors declared him dead.

The forensic medical examination report of July 24, 2024 states that the cause of death was “a combined disease: hypertension with vascular and organic lesions, diffuse myocardial sclerosis complicated by the development of cerebral edema, ventricular fibrillation, and pulmonary edema.”

Further in the document, investigator Alexander Voropayev lists several other illnesses diagnosed in Navalny, and then claims that his death was “arrhythmogenic in nature, manifested by a disturbance in the rhythm and conduction of the heart,” and that the cause of this arrhythmia was “a critical increase in blood pressure.”

It is alleged that injuries sustained during resuscitation efforts were found on the body, and no toxic substances were found in the oppositionist’s body.

"The investigators are now simply covering up the murder. But I am sure that it will be investigated, and all the perpetrators of the murder will be found," writes Zhdanov.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said she received the refusal “last week” — almost six months after her husband’s death.

"When Alexei felt ill, he was taken not to the medical unit, but back to the punishment cell. That he died there alone. That he was taken to the medical unit already unconscious. That in the last minutes before his death he complained of acute pain in his stomach," she claims and promises to tell about the results of an independent investigation in the future.

Alexander Polupan, Navalny’s former doctor, criticized the conclusions stated in the Investigative Committee’s document in a conversation with Agency.

"Either they didn't find the cause of death and pulled an owl onto a globe to write something. Or they found it but decided to hide it and wrote about arrhythmia," the doctor believes.

Alexei Navalny died on February 16, 2024, in a special regime penal colony where he was serving a sentence for several criminal cases in Russia, where he returned after an unsuccessful poisoning attempt on a plane flying from Omsk to Tomsk and treatment in Germany. Immediately upon his return, he was detained and arrested, and has not been released since.

His associates believe that Navalny was murdered. Soon after his death, it became known about negotiations on his prisoner exchange between Russia and the West - this exchange took place in early August and Russia released 15 people, another - a German citizen - was released by Belarus.