Navalny’s body released to his mother, aide says
The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, a top aide to Navalny said Saturday on his social media account.
Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, made the announcement on his Telegram account and thanked “everyone” who had called on Russian authorities to return Navalny’s body to his mother.
Earlier Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of mocking Christianity by trying to force his mother to agree to a secret funeral after his death in an Arctic penal colony.
Navalny, 47, Russia’s most well-known opposition politician, died Feb. 16 in an Arctic penal colony and his family has been fighting for more than a week to have his body returned to them. Prominent Russians released videos calling on authorities to release the body and Western nations have hit Russia with more sanctions as punishment for Navalny’s death as well as for the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, is still in Salekhard, Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter. Lyudmila Navalnaya has been in the Arctic region for more than a week, demanding that Russian authorities return the body of her son to her.
“The funeral is still pending,” Yarmysh tweeted, questioning whether authorities will allow it to go ahead “as the family wants and as Alexei deserves.”
Earlier Saturday, Navalny’s widow said in a video that Navalny’s mother was being “literally tortured” by authorities who had threatened to bury Navalny in the Arctic prison. They, she said, suggested to his mother that she did not have much time to make a decision because the body is decomposing, Navalnaya said.
“Give us the body of my husband,” Yulia Navalnaya said earlier Saturday. “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead.”
Authorities have detained scores of people as they seek to suppress any major outpouring of sympathy for Putin’s fiercest foe before the presidential election he is almost certain to win. Russians on social media say officials don’t want to return Navalny’s body to his family because they fear a public show of support for him.
Navalnaya accused Putin, an Orthodox Christian, of killing Navalny.
“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexei,” she said.
Muscovites lined up outside the city’s Christ the Savior Cathedral to pay their respects, according to photos and videos published by the independent Russian news outlet SOTAvision.
As of early Saturday afternoon, at least 27 people had been detained in nine Russian cities for showing support for Navalny, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests.
They included Elena Osipova, a 78-year-old artist from St. Petersburg who stood in a street with a poster showing Navalny with angel wings and Sergei Karabatov, 64, who came to a Moscow monument to victims of political repression with flowers and a note saying, “Don’t think this is the end.”
Also arrested was Aida Nuriyeva, from the city of Ufa near the Ural Mountains, who publicly held up a sign saying “Putin is Navalny’s murderer! I demand that the body be returned!”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected allegations that Putin was involved in Navalny’s death, calling them “absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state.”