The mother of Russia’s late opposition leader Alexey Navalny said Thursday that she has finally seen his body and that she is resisting intense pressure from authorities to agree to a secret burial away from public attention.
In a video statement from the Arctic city of Salekhard, Lyudmila Navalnaya said she was permitted to view her son’s body in the city morgue on Wednesday evening.
“According to the law, they should have given me Alexey’s body right away, but they have not done so until now. Instead, they are blackmailing me, setting me conditions on where, when and how Alexey should be buried. This is illegal,” she said, dressed in black.
“They want this to be done secretly, with no farewell. They want to bring me to the edge of a cemetery, to a fresh grave and say, 'Here lies your son.' I don’t agree to this,” she added in the YouTube video.
Navalny unexpectedly died in an Arctic penal colony last week at age 47. His family, colleagues and many Western nations have alleged that the Russian government murdered him. The Kremlin has denied that accusation and said it is investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.
The White House has said that on Friday, the U.S. would be “announcing a major sanctions package … to hold Russia accountable” for Navalny’s death.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday met Navalny’s wife and daughter and reiterated plans for additional sanctions on Russia.
“He was a man of incredible courage, and it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that,” Biden told reporters in California after meeting Navalny’s wife, Yulia, and daughter, Dasha.
“I know that we’re going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow,” Biden added.
During the meeting in California, Biden expressed his admiration for Navalny’s “extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone,” the White House said in a statement.
Back in Russia, Navalny’s mother also said she saw her son’s death certificate. His aides said the certificate attributed the death to natural causes.
Since Navalny’s death, about 400 people have been detained around the country for trying to pay tribute to the opposition leader, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.
Authorities are also blocking some memorials to victims of Soviet oppression around Russia that people were using as impromptu tributes to Navalny.
The opposition leader’s mother said authorities had threatened her over the burial process.
“I’m recording this video because they started threatening me. Looking into my eyes, they say that if I don’t agree to a secret funeral, they will do something with my son’s body,” she said.
“I don’t want special conditions,” she said. “I just want everything to be done according to the law. I demand that my son’s body be returned to me immediately.”
Navalny had been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He received three prison terms since then, on charges he rejected as politically motivated.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
