Russian officials have refused to tell Alexei Navalny’s family the probable cause of his death or the whereabouts of his body, which the late opposition activist’s team says is a cover-up orchestrated by the Kremlin.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, and the family’s lawyers have spent the past three days in a remote part of northern Russia trying to recover his body and establish a cause of death after the activist’s death in prison was announced on Friday .
But on Monday, Russian investigators told them that the probe into Navalny’s death had been extended for an indefinite period of time, while morgue staff would not say whether they had his body.
“They lie, they make time for themselves and they don’t even hide it,” Kira Yarmysh, spokeswoman for the Navalny family, wrote on social media.
The secrecy surrounding Navalny’s death at the IK-3 maximum security prison colony in Kharp, a small town in the Arctic Circle, has led his allies to believe he was likely murdered on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.
US President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday that the White House was “considering further sanctions” in response to Navalny’s death, while Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, said that “the EU will spare no effort to hold the Russian political leadership and authorities to account. . . and impose further costs for their actions, including through sanctions.”
After a meeting of EU foreign ministers who expressed their condolences to Yulia Navalnaya, the opposition politician’s widow, Borrell said Russia “must allow an independent and transparent international investigation into the circumstances of the [Navalny’s] unexpected death”.
Navalnaya asked Russians to “share her fury” as she vowed to support her husband’s cause.
“My husband was indestructible, that’s why Putin killed him. Shamefully, cowardly, without finding the courage to look him in the eyes or simply say his name,” Navalnaya said in a YouTube video of the Brussels meeting.
In a voice that trembled at times, Navalnaya said she knew “why exactly Putin killed Alexei,” promising to “speak to you soon” and to “name names and show faces” of those responsible, without elaborating.
“The main thing we can do for Alexei and for ourselves is to keep fighting,” he added. “What we need is a free, peaceful and happy Russia, the beautiful Russia of the future that my husband dreamed of so much. I want to live in that Russia. I want mine and Alexei’s children to live there. I want to build it with you.
Borrell said that ultimately “Putin himself” was responsible for Navalny’s death, but that the EU could “get down to the institutional structure of the prison system in Russia” when considering who to sanction.
“There is always room and there are always people who deserve to be punished,” he added.
The Kremlin said Monday that investigators were “doing everything necessary” to establish the cause of Navalny’s death and rejected Western accusations of Putin’s involvement.
“When there is no information, it is unacceptable to make these vulgar statements,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters. “These statements cannot cause any damage to the leader of our country, but they certainly do not make the person who makes them look good.”
Peskov said the Kremlin was “not involved” in the investigation or handling of Navalny’s body.
a fierce critic of Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, Navalny, 47, had been jailed since returning to Russia in 2021 after recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Russian president.
Despite the toll that 27 stints in a punishment cell took on his health, conditions he described as torture, Navalny appeared normal at a court hearing last Thursday and during a visit with family three days earlier, further fueling his followers’ suspicions. allies.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, a convoy of police and prison service vehicles drove down the only road connecting Kharp to Salekhard, the town where penal colony officials told Navalny’s mother that his body had been taken to ‘morgue.
Security camera footage of the unusual convoy, published Sunday by Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet, raised suspicions that it was secretly transporting Navalny’s body in the dead of night.
Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, compared the delays and mixed messages to the circus atmosphere that accompanied Navalny’s hospitalization after being poisoned with the nerve agent novichok in Siberia in 2020.
“This happened with the belongings that they didn’t want to return after he was poisoned. They continued to extend the investigation and never returned anything,” Zhdanov wrote on social media.
“It’s obvious what they’re doing. They are erasing the traces of their own crime. They are waiting for the war of hatred and fury against them to calm down,” she added.
Thousands of Russians in dozens of cities across the country lined up in freezing temperatures over the weekend to lay flowers for Navalny at memorials to Soviet political prisoners.
Russia effectively banned all dissent after invading Ukraine, making memorials the only legal form of protest against his death. The Kremlin has banned Navalny’s foundation, which now operates from exile, and arrested several of his lawyers last year.
Police have violently cracked down on several memorials, arresting at least 387 people in 39 cities, according to independent rights watchdog OVD-Info. Activists said police in some cities forced mourners to provide passport details or submit written explanations, while others reported physical threats.
The Kremlin downplayed news of Navalny’s death, limiting state television reports to brief comments without showing his face while spreading wild claims that the West was somehow involved.
Putin, who is set to extend his 24-year rule until at least 2030 in elections next month for which the Kremlin has admitted no real challenger, has not commented on Navalny’s death.
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