Putin says he approved prisoner swap involving Alexei Navalny before his death

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he had approved a prisoner swap involving Alexei Navalny before the opposition leader's mysterious death in an Arctic prison last month. Putin's comments came after results of the just-held Russian presidential elections indicated that he had won to assume an unprecedented fifth term as Russian president.

Putin said unnamed people made an offer to release Navalny in a swap deal with the West a few days before he died.

"The person who spoke to me hadn’t finished his sentence, and I said I agree. But, unfortunately, what happened happened," Putin said in his first reaction to Navalny's death which he further described as a "sad event".

"I agreed under one condition: we swap him, and he doesn’t come back. But such is life," said Putin. "When things like that happen you cannot do anything about it – that’s life."

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Navalny died in a Russian prison on February 16. Navalny's death came in the middle of the Munich Security Conference and thus drew a promptly galvanised Western condemnation. His death also coincided with the debate in the US Capitol Hill over funding Ukraine's war effort against Russia, following which Washington approved a $60 bn war aid package to Ukraine.

Navalny allies have previously accused Putin of being involved in an alleged plot to kill Navalny in jail to sabotage a prisoner swap in which Navalny would have been exchanged for a Russian prisoner jailed in Germany.

Putin, however, did not mention the second counterpart(s) of the potential prisoner swap and spoke about "some people who are behind bars in Western countries".

Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, claimed that Navalny died of "natural causes".