©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalny, reacts on the day of a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman/Pool/File Photo
(Reuters) – Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on Saturday demanded that Russian authorities release his body for burial and accused “demonic” Russian President Vladimir Putin of “torturing” her dead body.
In a six-minute video posted on YouTube, Navalnaya accused Putin of holding her husband’s body “hostage” and questioned Putin’s often professed Christian faith.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, said on Friday that Russian investigators would refuse to release his body from a morgue in the remote Arctic town of Salekhard until he agreed to bury him without a public funeral.
She said an official told her she would have to agree to their demands, as Navalny’s body was already decomposing.
On Saturday, Navalny’s aides said authorities had threatened to bury him in the remote prison colony where he would die unless his family agreed to their conditions.
In the video, an emotional Yulia Navalnaya said that Putin was personally responsible for the location of Navalny’s body and that he was “torturing” Navalny in death as he had in life.
“We already knew that Putin’s faith was false. But now we see it more clearly than ever,” said Navalnaya, dressed in black.
“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is doing now with Alexei’s body.”
Since returning to the Russian presidency in 2012, Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as a defender of traditional, conservative values against what he describes as corrosive Western liberalism.
He has also trumpeted his closeness to the Russian Orthodox Church, regularly speaking at church services on religious holidays and speaking about his personal faith.
Navalnaya said her husband was a devout Christian, attending church and fasting during Lent even while in prison. She said her political activism had been inspired by Christian values.
Concluding her video, she said: “Give us back my husband’s body. We want to hold a funeral service and bury him humanely, in the ground, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity.”