Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, repeatedly blocked a proposal to release a Russian hitman in exchange for the Kremlin opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony.

Navalny died mysteriously in the prison after being arrested in 2021 and transferred there two years later. Russian authorities had declared the 47-year-old an “extremist” in a ruling that still remains in force.

In a report by Der Spiegel, Ms Baerbock is said to have had major doubts about the legal and moral implications of an exchange for Vadim Krasikov, who was arrested in Germany and convicted of the murder of a former Chechen militant.

The exchange was floated by his family and close advisors, Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh, who lobbied the German government to go through with it as hopes for his release from the colony in Kharp, 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, faded with the continued extension of his sentence.