Russian spymaster said opposition leader Alexei Navalny died of natural causes

By The Associated Press

Russia’s spymaster says that opposition leader Alexei Navalny died of natural causes, a statement that appears to reflect the Kremlin efforts to assuage international outrage over the death of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe. Sergei Naryshkin, the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, a top Russian intelligence agency, made the statement in an interview broadcast Tuesday by Russian state television. He didn’t name the cause of Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic penal colony or give any other details. Russian authorities still haven’t announced the cause of his Feb. 16 death and many Western leaders blamed it on Putin, an accusation the Kremlin angrily rejected.