New leaked version of Russian authorities’ statement of refusal to investigate Navalny’s death includes list of injuries found on his body
A Russian Telegram channel that purports to have close ties to Russia’s security agencies has published a document that it claims is the original, unredacted version of the authorities’ official resolution stating their refusal to investigate Alexey Navalny’s death. Unlike the “official” version of the resolution that was sent to Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and two earlier versions of the document shared by The Insider last month, this version includes a thorough list of injuries purportedly found on Navalny’s body during his autopsy. Meduza lays out the various versions of this document that have now been published and explains how they differ from one another.
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Alexey Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, publishes a three-page resolution she received from the regional Investigative Committee branch in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, where Navalny died in prison in February 2024. The document states that the authorities have decided not to launch a formal investigation into Navalny’s death because they’ve determined it was “not criminal in nature.”
The resolution says that on February 16, Navalny’s health “sharply deteriorated” during a walk, prompting prison employees to call an ambulance. Before the medics arrived, it alleges, Navalny was given chest compressions and artificial respiration. Doctors later arrived at the scene and, at 2:17 p.m., declared him dead.
The document also says that state investigators have concluded Navalny’s death was the result of “combined diseases,” including cholecystitis, pancreatitis, a herniated disc, heart arrhythmia, and other conditions, and that it was triggered by a “critical increase in blood pressure.”
Navalnaya disputes the investigators’ account of events as well as their list of her husband’s supposed health conditions. “We know perfectly well that when Alexey started feeling ill, he was taken not to the medical ward but back to the punishment cell,” she says. “[We know] that he died there, alone. That he was already unconscious when he was taken to the medical ward. And that in the final minutes before his death, he was complaining of stomach pain.”
According to her, Navalny had no history of heart conditions. “Tell us, how did you discover this arrhythmia during the autopsy?” she writes. “A heart rhythm disorder is impossible to detect posthumously.”
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The investigative news site The Insider says it has obtained “hundreds” of official documents related to Navalny’s death. According to the outlet, these documents suggest that the Russian authorities “deliberately removed mentions of symptoms that don’t fit the official version” of events from their public statements.
The Insider publishes two versions of the authorities’ resolution on the refusal to initiate criminal proceedings: an earlier version and a redacted version. Both differ from the document published by Yulia Navalny in August.
The two versions of the document published by The Insider say that Navalny “felt a sudden decline in his health” and reported this to the guard on duty, who escorted him from the exercise yard back to the cell unit.
From there, however, the two documents differ. The earlier version reads as follows:
Navalny then lay on the floor and began to complain of severe abdominal pain. He started reflexively ejecting the contents of his stomach, convulsing, and lost consciousness, which was immediately reported to the correctional facility’s medical staff.
The redacted version, meanwhile, does not mention the abdominal pain, vomiting, or convulsing:
Navalny’s condition then deteriorated rapidly, which was immediately reported to A.V. Lisyuk, the head of the [prison’s medical unit], who decided upon his arrival to transfer Navalny to the medical unit and to call for an ambulance team.
The Insider says it’s also obtained an inventory of “seized objects” from the scene of Navalny’s death and that “samples of vomit” are recorded as having been “submitted for examination.” The outlet writes that the authorities “officially reported neither the examination nor the vomiting.” However, the version of the document that was ultimately sent to Yulia Navalnaya does mention vomit, saying that after Navalny’s body was examined, “swabs were taken from the surfaces of the upper limbs and the nasal and ear passages, and nail plates and vomit samples were taken.”
Alexander Polupan, a doctor who treated Navalny after he was poisoned with the chemical nerve agent Novichok in 2020, told The Insider that in his opinion, it’s “unlikely that these symptoms can be explained by anything other than poisoning.”
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The anonymous Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which claims to have inside information from Russian security forces, publishes what it purports is the original version of the resolution on the authorities’ refusal to initiate criminal proceedings.
This version of the document, in contrast to the one given to Yulia Navalnaya, contains a detailed list of injuries found on Navalny’s body. The descriptions of these injuries take up nearly an entire page. They include:
- Bruises on the elbows, shins, and foot that, according to the document, appeared 30–40 minutes before Navalny’s death and “are not causally related to his death”;
- Hemorrhages on the lower lip, which occurred during artificial lung ventilation;
- Rib fractures sustained during resuscitation and during their removal for medical-forensic examination;
- Tracheal fractures that appeared during the autopsy;
- An abrasion on the foot that appeared after death;
- A bruise on the forearm that occurred 3–7 days before death.
The version of the document given to Yulia Navalny mentions only that “bodily injuries were found that occurred as a result of resuscitation efforts and during the medical-forensic examination.”
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