Russian writer Eduard Limonov, a controversial figure who founded a radical nationalist party and led protests against President Vladimir Putin before supporting the Kremlin on Crimea's annexation, has died at 77, his party said Tuesday.

"Eduard Limonov died today in Moscow," The Other Russia party, which he previously led, said on its website.

Limonov, whose real name was Eduard Savenko, was born in 1943 in the central Russian city of Dzerzhinsk.

He moved to Moscow in 1966 and emigrated to the United States in 1974, working in a variety of odd jobs while writing and later moving to Paris, acquiring French citizenship.

In 1980, he published his best-known work "Eto Ya, Edichka" (It's Me, Eddie), a personal manifesto subsequently translated into 15 languages.

His autobiographical works became the basis of a 2004 feature film called "It's Russian."

After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, he returned to Russia and founded the ultra-nationalist National Bolshevik Party that was banned in 2007.

His radical nationalist positions won him notoriety in the 1990s when, among other actions, he was photographed during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict, firing a machine gun from a hillside above the besieged city of Sarajevo.

He was arrested in Siberia in April 2001 after party militants were found in possession of automatic weapons.

He served more than half of a four-year prison term for illegal arms possession.