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.