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More than 400 people detained while paying tribute in Russia Opposition leader Alexey NavalnyA prominent rights group reported that he died in a remote Arctic penal colony.
The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest enemy. Navalny Remained vocal in his relentless criticism of the Kremlin Even after surviving nerve agent poisoning and being sentenced to jail several times.
This news echoed all over the world, and hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities descended on monuments and memorials to victims of political repression with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay tribute to the politician. Police in more than a dozen cities detained 401 people by Saturday night, according to the OVD-Info rights group, which tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.
The group said more than 200 arrests were made in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. Among those detained was Grigory Mikhnov-Votenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church – a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church – who had announced plans to hold a memorial service for Navalny on social media and was arrested. He was arrested outside his house on Saturday morning. , He was accused of organizing a rally and placed in a holding cell at the police precinct, but was later hospitalized due to a stroke, OVD-Info reported.
St. Petersburg courts ordered 42 of those detained Friday to spend one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said late Saturday. In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in prison, according to OVD-Info. One person was jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two others in the city of Bryansk, the group said.
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The news of Navalny’s death came only a month ago. Presidential elections in Russia This is widely expected to give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power. Questions about the cause of death remained Sunday and it remained unclear when authorities would release his body to his family.
Navalny’s team said on Saturday that the politician had been “murdered” and accused authorities of deliberately preventing the release of the body, saying Navalny’s mother and lawyers received contradictory information from different institutions where they tried to retrieve the body. Went in search of. “They are driving us around in circles and covering their tracks,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Saturday.
“Everything in the colony is covered with cameras. Every step he took over all these years was filmed from all angles. Every employee has a video recorder. Not a single video has been leaked or published in two days. There is no room for uncertainty here,” Navalny’s closest aide and strategist Leonid Volkov said on Sunday.
According to Yarmysh, a note handed to Navalny’s mother said he died at 2:17 pm on Friday. Prison officials told his mother upon arriving at the penal colony on Saturday that her son died of “sudden death syndrome,” Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Was.
Russia’s Federal Prison Service said Navalny began feeling ill after a walk on Friday and fainted at the penal colony in the town of Kharap in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived but could not save him, the service said, adding that the cause of death was still being “established”.
Navalny had In jail since January 2021When he returned to Moscow after recovering from nerve agent poisoning in Germany, he blamed the Kremlin. Since his arrest, he has been sentenced to prison three times, many of which he has dismissed as politically motivated charges.
After the last verdict, in which he was sentenced to 19 years, Navalny said he understood that he was serving “a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of the life of this regime. “
Hours after Navalny’s death was reported, his wife Yulia Navalnaya said, gave a dramatic presentation At the Munich Security Conference.
She said she was unsure whether she could believe the news from official Russian sources, “but if it is true, I want Putin and everyone around Putin, Putin’s friends, his government to know. “Let them be held accountable for what they did to our country.” , to my family and to my husband.”
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