New Delhi, February 17
An official death notice of Putin critic Alexei Navalny had been given to his mother, Lyudmila, while his spokeswoman said that it was unclear where his body had been taken as the morgue nearest to the Arctic penal colony where he died had not received it.
“We demand that Alexei Navalny’s body be given to his family immediately,” said Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh Yarmysh.
“Russian officials have said that the dead opposition leader’s body will not be released to his relatives until investigations are complete,” wrote Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh on X.
“An employee of the prison had said that Navalny’s body had been taken to Salekhard, the town near the prison complex, by Russian investigators, who were conducting “research”. When Navalny’s lawyer and Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, arrived at the morgue in Salekhard they found it closed and were assured that Navalny’s body was not there,” posted Yarmysh on X.
Navalny had reportedly fallen unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the isolated penal colony about 3,000 kms from Moscow, where he was serving a 30-year sentence.
Western leaders and officials have been outraged over the death but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the West’s reaction unacceptable on Friday.
“The reaction of Western leaders, politicians and media to the news of Alexey Navalny’s death once again demonstrated their hypocrisy, cynicism and unscrupulousness. This is ‘Russia is to blame in every situation’ tactic in action. For each such case there is a pre-cooked cliched comment in stock,” said the Russian Foreign Ministry.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also expressed shock and has called for a full and transparent investigation into the death of Navalny.
Western media quoted a rights group to report the detention of nearly 300 people in over two dozen Russian cities for trying to stage events commemorating Navalny’s death. The rights group, OVD-Info, said the largest numbers of arrests took place in Moscow and St Petersburg and Moscow.
At least 340 people have been detained at events across 30 Russian cities since the death of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent, according to rights group OVD-Info.
It is the largest wave of arrests at political events in Russia since Sept. 2022, when more than 1,300 were arrested at demonstrations against a “partial mobilisation” of reservists for the military campaign in Ukraine.
OVD-Info, which reports on freedom of assembly in Russia, said the largest numbers of arrests on Saturday occurred in St Petersburg and Moscow, where Navalny’s movement had traditionally been strong, with 74 and 49 detained, respectively, as of 1409 GMT.
Footage filmed by Reuters on Saturday in St Petersburg showed dozens gathering by a monument to the victims of repression. Protesters laid flowers and candles, while some sang hymns and others hugged each other, shedding tears.
“I felt very sorry for him and for our country,” said an 83-year-old woman attending the vigil who declined to give her name. “I’m scared.”
A Reuters reporter at the scene said some 30 people were arrested shortly after the singing finished.
OVD-Info also reported individual arrests in smaller cities across Russia, from the border city of Belgorod, where seven were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Thursday, to Vorkuta, an Arctic mining outpost once a centre of the Stalin-era gulag labour camps. / Agencies