By Guy Faulconbridge, Felix LightMOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia's most prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny collapsed and died on Friday after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.
"Russian authorities publish a confession that they killed Alexei Navalny in prison," Navalny aide Leonid Volkov wrote on social media.
"Alexei Navalny paid with his life for his resistance to a system of oppression," France's Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said.
"My sincere belief is that it was the conditions of detention that led to Navalny's death," Russian newspaper editor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov told Reuters.
Navalny long forecast Russia could face seismic political turmoil, including revolution, because he said Putin built a brittle system of personal rule reliant on sycophancy and corruption.
Persons:
Guy Faulconbridge, Felix Light, Alexei Navalny, Navalny, Vladimir Putin, Leonid Volkov, Stephane Sejourne, Vladimir Putin's, Navalny's, Kira Yarmysh, Dmitry Muratov, Putin, Yulia, Andrew Cawthorne
Organizations:
Federal Penitentiary Service, Nenets Autonomous, IK, Kremlin, Peace, Reuters, KREMLIN, U.S, CIA
Locations:
Nenets, Nenets Autonomous District, Kharp, Moscow, Russian, Russia, Germany, Siberia, Europe