'The sun is gone' After Navalny's death, many fear what an even bolder Putin may do next

Vladimir Putin smiled and looked unusually festive last Friday as he praised factory workers and joked with state reporters at an industrial plant in the Ural city of Chelyabinsk.

- Pjotr Sauer

Putin's confidence was unmistakable - a sign of his belief he would get away with the death that day of his biggest critic in jail while outlasting Ukraine on the battlefield.

The world might never know what specifically happened on the day of Alexei Navalny's death at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle.

Navalny spent years enduring some of the worst excesses of the Russian prison system. The country's penal colonies are notorious for their grim conditions and the opposition leader was singled out for particularly cruel treatment.

Whatever the circumstances of his death, years of mistreatment support the widespread view held by his supporters that the Kremlin was responsible.

"Putin killed Alexei Navalny," said Georgy Alburov, a Navalny ally and a researcher for his Anti-Corruption Foundation. "How exactly he did it will certainly be exposed."

Leaders across the west similarly echoed Alburov's view, laying the blame for Navalny's death directly at the feet of Putin. "Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. Putin is responsible," said the US president, Joe Biden.

But these statements are likely to leave the Kremlin shrugging its shoulders at best.