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Alexei Navalny’s spokesperson confirmed this on Saturday Russian opposition leader He died in a remote Arctic penal colony, said to have been “murdered”, but it was unclear where his body was as his family and friends searched for answers.
Navalny’s death at the age of 47 has deprived the Russian opposition of Most Famous and Inspiring Politicians Less than a month before the elections, President Vladimir Putin will next six years in power,
Although neither the jailed anti-corruption crusader nor other Kremlin critics were in any position to challenge Putin for the presidency, Navalny’s defeat was a crushing blow to Russians, who had grown increasingly critical of Putin’s seemingly relentless foe. Had pinned hopes for my future. This also raised the question as to why he was murdered. Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said Russian authorities told the politician’s team on Saturday that Navalny’s cause of death had not yet been established and that the results of a new investigation would be released next week. Navalny’s mother was told that the body would not be released until the investigation was completed, he said. The decision has led to speculation that Russian authorities may be keen to keep the body in their possession in an attempt to conceal possible wrongdoing. “They’re driving us around in circles and covering their tracks,” Yarmish said.
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.
A man pays his last respects to Alexei Navalny at the monument, a large stone on the Solovetsky Islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established along with the historic Federal Security Service (FSB, the Soviet KGB successor). Building in the background, in Moscow, Russia, Saturday morning, February 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Yarmish said a prison colony employee said the body was taken to the nearby city of Salekhard as part of a post-mortem examination. When Navalny’s mother and one of the late politician’s lawyers visited the morgue in Salekhard, it was closed, Navalny’s team wrote on its Telegram channel. But the lawyer called the mortuary and was told that the body was not there, his team said.
Yarmysh said another of Navalny’s lawyers went to Salekhard’s investigative committee and was told that Navalny’s cause of death had not yet been established and that a new investigation was being conducted with the results to be released next week. Russia’s Investigative Committee informed Navalny’s team that the body would not be handed over to his relatives until the investigation was completed, he said.
“It is clear that they are lying and doing everything possible to avoid handing over the body,” Yarmysh wrote on X, adding that his team has demanded that Navalny’s body be “immediately returned to his family.” Let it be handed over.”
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said Navalny began feeling ill after taking 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”.
Maria Pevchikh, head of the board of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, said the opposition leader “will live forever in millions of hearts.”
“Navalny was murdered. We still don’t know how we’ll live, but together, we’ll think of something,” she wrote on X.
Meanwhile, the arrests continued on Saturday as Russians came to lay flowers in Navalny’s memory at the Memorial to the Victims of Soviet Era Genocide. OVD-Info, a group that tracks political repression in Russia, said on Saturday that more than 273 people had been detained at memorial events since Navalny’s death.
Memorial items placed on Friday were removed overnight, but people continued to bring flowers on Saturday. In Moscow, a large group of people chanted “Shame on you” as police pulled a screaming woman from the crowd, video shared on social media showed.
More than 10 people were detained at a monument in St. Petersburg, including a priest who was there to hold a service for Navalny.
In other cities across the country, police cordoned off some monuments and officers were taking photographs of visitors and writing down their personal data in an apparent attempt to intimidate.
“After the murder of Alexei Navalny, it is absurd to regard Putin as the alleged legitimate head of the Russian state,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday. “He is a thug who maintains power through corruption and violence.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Saturday that Britain “will take action” against Russians responsible for Navalny’s death.
Speaking to broadcasters in Munich, Cameron said there “must be consequences” for “such appalling human rights violations”. He said Britain would “look at whether individual people are responsible and whether there are individual measures and actions that we can take.” Cameron did not say whether the response would include financial sanctions or other measures.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that Washington does not know exactly what happened, “but there is no doubt that Navalny’s death was the result of something done by Putin and his thugs.”
There was a stir in the Kremlin on Friday outburst of anger World leaders, including Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, described the statements issued before doctors released Navalny’s cause of death as “unacceptable” and “outrageous.”
Navalny had In jail since January 2021When he returned to Moscow after recovering from nerve agent poisoning in Germany, he blamed the Kremlin. He was later convicted three times, saying each case was politically motivated, and received a 19-year sentence for extremism.
After the last verdict, Navalny said he understood he was serving “a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of the life of this regime.”
Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus and senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said Navalny’s defeat shows that “the punishment for protest in Russia is now not just imprisonment, but death.” Is.” ,
Hours after Navalny’s death was reported, his wife Yulia Navalnaya said, gave a dramatic presentation At the Munich 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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Associated Press writer Katie Marie Davis in Manchester, England contributed to this report.
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