Navalny’s body mystery

EXCUSES: MOTHER HEARS INVESTIGATION INTO HIS DEATH IS PROLONGED

Politician’s widow to meet European foreign ministers.

The mother of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is being refused access to his body for a third day, his team said yesterday, as his widow prepared to meet European foreign ministers.

Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison last week has shocked the country’s exiled opposition which, along with the West, pointed the finger at the Kremlin.

Navalny’s allies said investigators told his mother, Lyudmila, the investigation into his death in prison “has been extended”.

Russia’s prison service said Navalny, 47, died on Friday after a walk in his remote prison above the Arctic Circle.

His mother on Saturday travelled to the isolated prison colony in the town of Kharp – about 2 000km from Moscow – but was told his body was not there.

She was then sent to a morgue in the regional hub of Salekhard, but officials there also denied her access to the body.

“Alexei’s mother and his lawyers arrived at the morgue early in the morning. They were not allowed to go in,” Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on social media.

“One of the lawyers was literally pushed out. When the staff was asked if Alexei’s body was there, they did not answer.”

She later said the mother – who has not spoken publicly – was told a probe into his death was being prolonged.

“It is not known how long it will continue. The cause of death is still ‘undetermined’. They’re lying, playing for time and do not even hide it,” Yarmysh said.

Navalny’s team, which has operated from outside Russia for more than two years, have demanded his body be handed over to relatives.

They have accused authorities of “covering up their tracks”. Putin has not yet commented on the death, despite making public appearances after it was announced.

Authorities detained hundreds of mourners who brought flowers to local monuments in Russia over the weekend, rights groups said.

As his relatives and lawyers searched for his body in the Russian Far North, his widow Yulia Navalnaya was yesterday heading for Brussels to meet EU foreign ministers.

She has held Putin personally responsible for her husband’s death. “I want Putin and all his entourage, Putin’s friends and his government to know: they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband,” she said when the death was announced on Friday.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he would welcome Yulia Navalnaya to the bloc’s Foreign Affairs Council yesterday.

“EU ministers will send a strong message of support to freedom fighters in Russia” and “honour” Navalny’s memory, he added on X on Sunday.

Navalnaya was by Navalny’s side throughout his more than decade long fight against the Kremlin. She managed to fly him out of Russia when he was poisoned in 2020 with what doctors said was a nerve agent and defiantly returned with him to Moscow, knowing he would go to prison, in 2021. –