Hundreds protesting Navalny’s death arrested
More than 400 Russian supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last week in a Russian prison, have been arrested for paying tributes as modest as laying flowers at the impromptu memorials that have sprung up across the country, a Russian rights group reported Sunday.
OVD-Info, which tracks political arrests and provides legal services, said more than 200 arrests took place in St. Petersburg alone. Grigory MikhnovVoitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, was arrested Saturday after announcing plans to hold a memorial service for Navalny. He was charged with organizing a rally and taken into custody but was later hospitalized with a stroke, OVD-Info reported.
In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-Info. One person was also jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk, the group said.
The Russian government, which announced Navalny’s death Friday, says the cause remains under investigation.
Navalny’s team said Saturday that the politician was “murdered” and accused authorities of deliberately stalling the release of the body, with Navalny’s mother and lawyers getting contradicting information from various institutions where they went in their quest to retrieve the body.
Prison officials told Navalny’s mother when she arrived at the penal colony Saturday that her son had perished from “sudden death syndrome,” Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X.
Navalny, 47, was an unrelenting critic of President Vladimir Putin, even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, published an Instagram post Sunday of Navalny kissing her with the caption “I love you.”
President Joe Biden, responding to reporters Saturday night, again blamed
Putin for Navalny’s death.
“Putin is responsible. Whether he ordered it, he’s responsible for the circumstance,” Biden said. “It’s a reflection of who he is. It cannot be tolerated.”
The news of Navalny’s death came a month before a presidential election in Russia that is widely expected to give Putin another six years in power.
Putin killed Navalny in an effort to ensure the president’s iron grip on Russia won’t be weakened, the wife of jailed opposition figure Vladimir KaraMurza told the BBC. “All that impunity that lasted for decades has led (Putin) to believe he’s somehow untouchable,” Evgenia Kara-Murza said.
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tennessee, the special representative on political prisoners with the Organization for Security and Cooperation, wrote Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking to have Vladimir Kara-Mura designated as “wrongfully detained.” The designation would prompt offices throughout the State Department and other U.S. government agencies to work collaboratively to try and secure their release.