Free Republic

Russia's spymaster said Tuesday 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 didn't name the cause of 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.”

Russia's parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said: "The British need to study some proverbs - 'Russians harness the horse slowly, but ride it fast'." He told politicians that "the unscrupulous British" had eaten Russian fish for 68 years - declaring: "Now let them lose weight, get smarter." On Wednesday, the UK imposed sanctions on six people in charge of the Arctic penal colony where Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic, died last week. Mr Volodin said withdrawal from the fishing deal was in direct response to these sanctions - as British vessels caught 556,000 tonnes of cod and haddock in Russian...