The top lawyer of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison in February last year, told AFP she regretted not finding the right words to stop him returning to Moscow in 2021.

Olga Mikhailova, who defended Navalny for 16 years, said his return to Russia sparked a "tragic" chain of events leading to his death -- and to the jailing last week of three of his legal team on extremism charges.

February 16 will mark the first anniversary of the charismatic politician's death in an Arctic penal colony, which his supporters regard as murder sanctioned by the Kremlin.

"Today I very much regret that I didn't do everything possible, everything in my power to prevent him from returning to Moscow," Mikhailova said in an interview in Paris. "I feel like I did not push hard enough."

Navalny barely survived a poisoning in 2020 with the Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok. Following treatment in Germany, he returned to Russia on January 17, 2021 and was immediately arrested and subsequently jailed.

He died in a remote Arctic prison on February 16, 2024 in unclear circumstances. His allies and family say he was murdered on President Vladimir Putin's orders. Navalny himself predicted in his memoir he would be poisoned in........

© International Business Times