Russia’s spymaster has said that opposition leader Alexei Navalny died of natural causes, a statement that appeared to reflect the Kremlin’s efforts to assuage international outrage over the death of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe.

Sergei Naryshkin, the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the top spy agency known under its Russian acronym SVR, made the statement in an interview broadcast by Russian state television.

He did not name the cause of Mr Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic penal colony or give any other details.

“Sooner or later life ends and people die,” he said. “Navalny has died of natural causes.”

Mr Navalny died on February 16 at a penal colony in the town of Kharp, about 1,200 miles north-east of Moscow where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism.

Russian authorities still have not announced the cause of his death at the age of 47 and many western leaders blamed it on Mr Putin, an accusation the Kremlin angrily rejected.

Mr Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent days getting authorities to release her son’s body as officials claimed that they needed to conduct post-mortem tests. She made made a video appeal to Mr Putin to let her bury her son with dignity.

Mr Navalny was buried on Friday in a Moscow suburb in a funeral that drew thousands of mourners amid a heavy police presence. His team said several Moscow churches refused to hold the funeral.

Mr Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

His Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were designated as “extremist organisations” by the Russian government that same year.