Alexei Navalny death – latest: Russian opposition leader and Putin critic dies in prison, say authorities

Exiled Russian businessman and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said that Vladimir Putin is responsible if Alexei Navalny is dead.

The Kremlin has said it has no information about Alexei Navalny’s cause of death, but said that Russian president Vladimir Putin was aware.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s penitentiary service was making all checks regarding Mr Navalny, but that he had no additional information.

Russia’s prison agency said Mr Navalny had died in prison aged 47. The federal prison service said in a statement that Mr Navalny felt unwell after a walk on Friday and lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived to try to rehabilitate him, but he died.

There was no immediate confirmation of Mr Navalny’s death from his team.

My colleague Athena Stavrou has more in this breaking story, which you can refresh for updates:

Alexei Navalny was “brutally murdered by the Kremlin”, Latvian president Edgars Rinkevics has said.

“Whatever your thoughts about Alexei Navalny as the politician, he was just brutally murdered by the Kremlin. That’s a fact and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime. My condolences to the family and friends,” he wrote on X/Twitter.

The EU holds Vladimir Putin’s regime “solely responsible” for Alexei Navalny’s death, European Council president Charles Michel has said.

Alexei Navalny foresaw the inevitable retribution he would face for speaking out about corruption in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, saying: “I am in the very blackest part of the black list.”

Over the years, Mr Navalny faced physical attacks, repeated arrests, investigations, and criminal proceedings. The assassination attempt, via Novichok poisoning in Russia resulted in him being evacuated to Germany in a coma for life-saving treatment.

His family and lawyers have previously said he had been suffering from an acute, undiagnosed, stomach illness while in prison. That, and general deprivation, has led to alarming weight loss and fainting spells.

He had returned to Russia following the poisoning despite warnings from allies and friends that it would be highly dangerous. He was arrested at the airport, put before a court, and sentenced to two and half years of a former suspended jail term for alleged fraud.

This was just a holding move by the government prosecutors. In August 2022 he was sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of spending public donations to his Anti-Corruption Foundation on “extremism and personal needs”. In August this year, he was sentenced to a further 19 years of a raft of “extremism” charges. There were further charges, this time of “vandalism”, due.

A former editor of the Financial Times has hailed Alexei Navalny as a man of great courage.

A former US ambassador to Russia has called Vladimir Putin a “cowardly b******” in response to reports of Alexei Navalny’s death.

Tory party chair Richard Holden has described Alexei Navalny’s death as a tragedy.

“As the fiercest advocate for Russian democracy, Alexei Navalny demonstrated incredibly courage. My thoughts are with his wife and the people of Russia, for whom this is a huge tragedy,” he wrote on X.