“It is obvious that he was killed by Putin,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy...

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country temporarily took in Navalny in 2020 after he was poisoned with a nerve agent, praised the Kremlin critic’s bravery and said his death makes clear “what kind of regime this is.”

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 Navalny was “brutally murdered by the Kremlin,” said Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “That’s a fact and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime.” 

-->Navalny’s associates stressed they didn’t have independent confirmation of his death in the reports that came from Russia’s penitentiary officials. His close ally Ivan Zhdanov said authorities “must notify the relatives” within 24 hours “if true.”

“There hasn’t been any notifications,” he said on X, formerly Twitter. “We have no other comments beyond that.” <--

The outpouring of sympathy for Navalny’s family and outrage at the Kremlin, which in recent years mounted an unprecedented crackdown on dissent, came from all over the world.

“If this is true, then no matter the formal cause the responsibility for the premature death is Vladimir Putin personally, who first gave the green light to the poisoning of Alexei and then put him in prison,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled Russia tycoon turned opposition figure in exile, speaking in an online statement. 

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“If it is confirmed, the death of Alexei is a murder. Organized by Putin,” opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov said on social media. “Even if Alexei died of ‘natural’ causes, those were triggered by his poisoning and further torture in prison.”

...Garry Kasparov said “Putin tried and failed to murder Navalny quickly and secretly with poison, and now he has murdered him slowly and publicly in prison.”

“He was killed for exposing Putin and his mafia as the crooks and thieves they are,” Kasparov, who lives abroad, wrote on X.

Pyotr Verzilov, a prominent member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot, said “Navalny was murdered in prison.” In a post on X, Verzilov added: “We will definitely take revenge and destroy this regime.”

Western officials also blamed Putin and his government.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen...called it “a grim reminder of what Putin and his regime are all about"...

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia has questions to answer if the reports are true.

This is getting weird. 

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White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told NPR that if Navalny’s death is confirmed, “it’s a terrible tragedy and, given the Russian government’s long and sordid history of doing harm to its opponents..."

 U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, called his death, if confirmed, “a further sign of Putin’s brutality” and that “whatever story they tell — let us be clear — Russia is responsible.” 

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, also at the conference, echoed her remarks, saying “Putin’s Russia imprisoned him, trumped up charges against him, poisoned him, sent him to an Arctic penal colony and now he has tragically died. And we should hold Putin accountable for this.”