Vladimir Putin has claimed he had agreed to a prisoner swap involving Alexei Navalny before the opposition leader’s sudden death in an Arctic prison last month.

Speaking in central Moscow after early results indicated he had won Russia’s presidential election in a landslide, 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.

It was the first time Putin has commented on Navalny since his death, which he called 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.”

Allies of Navalny have previously said that Putin had the opposition leader killed in jail to sabotage a prisoner swap in which Navalny would have been exchanged for a convicted hitman jailed in Germany.

Navalny’s longtime ally Leonid Volkov said on Sunday that Putin’s comments were an admission that he had Navalny killed. “Putin killed Alexei Navalny. And now he has decided he doesn’t need to pretend any more. He’s confirmed it himself,” Volkov wrote on X.

The Guardian and other western media have reported that Navalny was part of discussions on a prisoner exchange, although details of the deal remain unclear. Putin did not specify who Navalny would have been traded for, mentioning “some people who are behind bars in western countries”.

Maria Pevchikh, a close ally of the opposition leader, said in a video last month that Navalny was in line to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB hitman who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a Chechen former separatist in Berlin.

Putin’s statements on Sunday were interpreted by his critics as an attempt to distance himself from involvement in Navalny’s death.

“Putin already knew that Navalny was about to be killed, and that’s the only reason he agreed easily [to the swap], so that now he can say: ‘Well, you see, it wasn’t beneficial for me, I wanted to trade him,’ said Roman Dobrokhotov, an investigative journalist who was close to Navalny.

Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, claimed that Navalny died of “natural causes”. Putin’s foes and critics have often met with violent deaths.

After Navalny’s funeral in Moscow, his team urged voters to turn up at the polls en masse at noon on Sunday to honour his memory.

Thousands formed long lines in Moscow, St Petersburg and at embassies across the world at midday in a symbolic show of dissent against Putin’s rule.

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