MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. NATO countries are telling on themselves with their rush to judgment after Alexey Navalny’s death, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The leaders of NATO countries have exposed themselves with their knee-jerk reaction to Navalny’s death, making direct accusations against Russia. No forensic examination has been conducted yet but the West has already drawn conclusions," she wrote on Telegram.

According to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Alexey Navalny, who was serving his prison term at Penal Colony No. 3, felt ill after a walk on February 16, and collapsed. Although medical workers and the ambulance team that arrived at the scene did everything possible to resuscitate him, their efforts were in vain. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Navalny’s death had been reported to President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, twice sentenced to probation earlier, was put on a wanted list for repeatedly violating his probation over his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case. On February 2, 2021, a Moscow court sentenced him to real prison time instead in lieu of his suspended sentence. He was also found guilty of contempt of court and election campaign fundraising fraud in March 2022 and of creating an extremist community in August 2023.