Russia hands over Navalny’s body to his mother

WARSAW: The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been given to his mother more than a week after he died in an Arctic prison colony, his team said on Saturday.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, died on February 16 in one of Russia’s toughest prisons in northern Siberia.

He was serving a 19-year sentence on charges denounced by Putin’s critics as political retribution for his opposition activity.

“Alexei’s body was handed over to his mother,” a spokesman for Navalny’s team, Kira Yarmysh, said on X, formerly Twitter. “Many thanks to all those who demanded this with us.”

For a week, Russian officials had refused to give Lyudmila Navalnaya custody of her son’s body. She had traveled to the town of Salekhard in the Yamalo-Nenets region, the nearest settlement to the prison colony where Navalny died, to recover it.

On Friday, Navalny’s team said they had filed a lawsuit to obtain the body. They accused local officials of having threatened to bury him on the prison grounds if his mother did not agree to a “secret” funeral.

On Saturday, plans for the funeral were still unclear, Yarmysh wrote on X.

“Lyudmila Ivanovna is still in Salekhard. The funeral is still pending,” she wrote.

“We do not know if the authorities will interfere to carry it out as the family wants and as Alexei deserves.”

His team has already argued that the Kremlin is trying to block a public funeral, which could turn into a show of support for Navalny’s movement and his opposition to Putin.

The Russian leader, who never said Navalny’s name in public, has not commented on the death of his most vocal critic.

His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has criticized statements by Navalny’s wife and Western leaders blaming Putin for his death as “vulgar.”

Russian authorities said Navalny died of “natural causes” after he lost consciousness following a walk in the prison colony, nicknamed “Polar Wolf.”

His team denounced officials’ initial refusal to release his body — their refusal for days to let his mother even see it — accusing them of trying to “cover their tracks.”

G7 leaders, in a statement Saturday praising Navalny’s “life fighting against the Kremlin’s corruption,” also called for the truth.

“We call on the Russian government to fully clarify the circumstances around his death,” said the statement from the G7 nations: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.

Tens of thousands of Russians had signed a petition calling for Navalny’s body to be released.

Dozens of high-profile Russian cultural figures also published video messages urging the same.

On Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added his voice to those pointing the finger at the Kremlin.

“Putin pretends to be powerful, but truly powerful leaders do not assassinate their opponents,” Trudeau told journalists in Kyiv.

Navalny shot to prominence through his anti-corruption campaigning, exposing what he said were the ill-gotten gains of Putin and his entourage in slick YouTube films that racked up millions of views.