Navalny was poisoned by Putin, claims his widow
As mother of Russian opposition leader is denied access to morgue...
ALEXEI Navalny’s widow has accused Vladimir Putin of killing him, as she vowed to continue her husband’s work.
Yulia Navalnaya said her spouse was poisoned ‘by another of Putin’s novichoks’ as she criticised the authorities for stalling over the release of his body.
Three days after the death of the Russian opposition leader in an Arctic prison, Ms Navalnaya said she would ‘continue to fight for the freedom of our country’.
In a video address on her late husband’s YouTube channel, she said: ‘Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband Alexei Navalny... Alexei died in a prison colony after three years of torment and torture... I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny.
‘I will continue to fight for the freedom of our country. And I call on you to stand by me.’ She added: ‘Putin took from me the most valuable thing that I had, the closest and most loved person. But Putin also took Navalny from you.’
After Mr Navalny’s mother Lyudmila was denied access to a morgue where his body was believed to be, Ms Navalnaya accused the authorities of trying to conceal evidence. She said: ‘They are cowardly and meanly hiding his body, refusing to give it to his mother and lying miserably while waiting for the trace of another of Putin’s novichoks to disappear.’
Mr Navalny, 47, who was the Kremlin’s most prominent critic, was imprisoned in January 2021 after he returned to Russia from Germany where he was recuperating from a nearlethal poisoning with a nerve agent. He died in a penal colony on Friday, with Russia’s prison service saying he became unwell after a walk and lost consciousness.
Yesterday, Mr Navalny’s team said they had been told his body would not be released to his family for 14 days due to ‘chemical analysis’ being carried out.
Mr Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said: ‘Navalny’s body is being hidden to hide the traces of the murder. This 14-day “chemical analysis” is an outright lie and mockery.’
In Brussels yesterday, Mr Navalny’s widow met European Union foreign ministers and other officials.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was mulling sanctions against Russia and he also called for an independent international investigation into the causes of Mr Navalny’s death. He said responsibility for Mr Navalny’s death lies with ‘Putin himself, but we can go down to the institutional
‘His body is being hidden’
structure of the penitentiary system in Russia’, to impose asset freezes and travel bans. US president Joe Biden said his administration is also considering imposing additional sanctions on Russia.
Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski urged his EU counterparts to act on Ms Navalnaya’s request that the bloc impose sanctions on more of Putin’s backers, beyond the oligarchs and other Russian officials already targeted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations from Western leaders as ‘boorish’ and ‘inadmissible’.