Navalny’s mother appeals to Putin to hand over her son’s body: ‘They don’t even tell me where he is’

By Reuters 20 February 2024, 3:02 pm

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In this grab taken from video, Lyudmila Navalnaya, mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, right, leaves the building of the Investigative Committee, regional department in Yamal-Nenets region in Salekhard, 1937 km (1211 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia, Feb. 19, 2024 (AP Photo)

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of dead Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, demands that President Vladimir Putin hand over her son’s body so she could bury him.

Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died suddenly on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” penal colony above the Arctic Circle where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said.

Speaking in a video filmed front of the prison as small snowflakes swirled in the air, his mother – dressed in black – says she does not even know where her son’s corpse was and demands Putin give the order to release it.

“For a fifth day I cannot see him, they aren’t giving me his body and don’t even tell me where he is,” Navalnaya says in the message broadcast on the Navalny LIVE YouTube channel.

“I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin. Resolving this issue depends on you alone. Let me finally see my son.

“I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him humanely.”

A protest following the death in jail of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, outside the Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv, on February 16, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

She also sent an official letter to Putin with the same demand.

Navalny’s allies have cited a Russian investigator as saying that the authorities need at least 14 days to conduct various chemical tests on his body and cannot therefore hand his corpse over yet.

The West and Navalny’s supporters say Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. The Kremlin has denied involvement and said that Western claims that Putin was responsible were unacceptable.

Putin has made no public comment on Navalny’s death but it has further deepened a gaping schism in relations between Moscow and the West caused by the nearly two-year Ukraine war.