Putin Critic May Have Been Killed With "Single Punch To Heart": Report

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny may have been killed with a single punch to the heart - an old method used by the KGB - a human rights activist has claimed. This comes even as the Russian officials are yet to release Navalny's body who died suddenly a week ago in the Arctic penal colony where he had been serving sentences totalling more than 30 years.

"It is an old method of the KGB's special forces divisions," Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the human rights group Gulagu.net, told the Times of London citing a source at the penal colony.

"They trained their operatives to kill a man with one punch in the heart, in the center of the body. It was a hallmark of the KGB," Osechkin said.

KGB was much-feared Soviet-era internal security service. It was officially dissolved on December 3, 1991. It was later succeeded in Russia by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and what would later become the Federal Security Service (FSB).

He claimed that ahead of the fatal strike, the 47-year-old had been kept outdoors for hours in the harsh, subzero temperatures to weaken his body.

"I think that they first destroyed his body by keeping him out in the cold for a long time and slowing the blood circulation down to a minimum," Osechkin said, citinig an unidentified source working at the prison. "And then it becomes very easy to kill someone, within seconds, if the operative has some experience in this."

As per a report, the body of Vladimir Putin's most vociferous critic had "signs of bruises", an anonymours paramedic told an independent news outlet.

The paramedic said the bodies of those who die in prison are usually taken straight to the Foreign Medicine Bureau, "but his body was taken to a clinical hospital for some reason." The "bruises" on his body resembled marks that one suffers when being held down during a seizure, he added.

Alexei Navalny's team has claimed that Russian authorities have told his mother he would be buried in the penal colony unless she agreed to lay him to rest without a public funeral.

Navalny's mother Lyudmila has been demanding for days that authorities hand over his body to be buried in a way that will allow his friends, family and supporters to pay their respects.

Navalny's family and supporters have accused Putin of having him killed, an accusation that the Kremlin has angrily rejected. He had survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 and years of harsh treatment in prison, including long spells in solitary confinement.

Putin, who never mentioned Navalny in his speeches, has not yet commented on his death.

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Navalny, has released a six-minute video on Saturday and demanded that Russian authorities release his body for burial and accused a "demonic" Putin of "torturing" his corpse.

According to Russian officials, Navalny "fely unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness". "All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not give positive results. Doctors of the ambulance stated the death of the convict. The causes of death are being established," they claimed.

His mother was given a notice of the death that had 2.17 pm local time (2.37 pm IST) on February 16. She was told the cause of his death was "sudden death syndrome".

"Sudden death syndrome" is a vague term for different cardiac syndromes that cause sudden cardiac arrest and death.