Alexei Navalny: Russian opposition leader and outspoken Vladimir Putin critic dies in prison at 47

Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, has died in prison according to the Russian prison agency.

In a statement, the agency said that Mr Navalny, 47, lost consciousness on after taking unwell following a walk on Friday, February 16. It added that an ambulance arrived to try to rehabilitate him but he died.

While the prison agency confirmed the news, there has been no confirmation from his team of his passing. Navalny was being imprisoned in a jail around 40 mile north of the Arctic Circle, after being sentenced to 19 years to a "special regime".

The outspoken activist, who led the movement of protests against election fraud in Russia in 2011 and 2012 and openly investigated Putin's political relationships, was jailed after he returned to Russia following a suspected novichok poisoning by Russia's FSB security service which put him into a coma. He was arrested on a parole violation charge, and was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

Navalny was recently seen looking gaunt and frail, with his allies accusing Russian authorities of "gradually killing him" with poision-laced food while in custody. After Navalny collapsed last year, his ally and Russian political activist Ruslan Shaveddinov made the accusation, saying: “It might sound like paranoia, but after the novichok poisoning, it seems completely plausible. He lost 8kg in two weeks, this hasn’t happened before and the doctors are not telling him why he is in so much pain."