Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul: “Putin killed Navalny. Let’s be crystal clear about that.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul reacted Friday morning to the news that his friend Alexei Navalny, a well-known Kremlin critic and anti-corruption activist, died at a penal colony where he was being held about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Navalny died less than a month before Russia’s election that will give Vladimir Putin six more years of power, and as he served a prison sentence widely viewed as political punishment following a poisoning attempt believed to have been ordered by the Russian government. Supporters of Navalny and western officials are calling the opposition leader’s death a political assassination.

“I’m going to try to be analytic, but I want you to know Alexei Navalny was my friend. I was with his wife last night. I’m here in Munich talking to her. His daughter Dasha goes to school at Stanford, so this is a pretty emotional time for me,” McFaul said to the hosts of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.

“Putin killed Navalny. Let’s be crystal clear about that,” McFaul continued. “He arrested him. He had him in solitary confinement. He has put him in a cell which was designed to kill him, and today he is dead.”

“Putin killed Navalny, and why did he kill Navalny? Because Putin is weak,” McFaul added. “You don’t kill people if you’re strong. Putin killed Navalny because Navalny was the one opposition leader in Russia that Putin feared the most.”