MOSCOW 鈥� The mother of Russia鈥檚 top opposition leader said Thursday that she has seen her son's body and that she is resisting strong pressure by authorities to agree to a secret burial outside the public eye.
Speaking in a video statement from the Arctic city of Salekhard, Lyudmila Navalnaya said investigators allowed her to see her son鈥檚 body in the city morgue. She said she reaffirmed the demand to give Navalny鈥檚 body to her and protested what she described as authorities trying to force her to agree to a secret burial.
鈥淭hey are blackmailing me, they are setting conditions where, when and how my son should be buried,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey want it to do it secretly without a mourning ceremony.鈥�
Navalny's spokesman Kira Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter, that his mother was also shown a medical certificate stating that the 47-year-old politician died of 鈥渘atural causes.鈥� Yarmysh didn't specify what those were.
Navalny, Russia's most , suddenly died in an Arctic prison last week, prompting hundreds of Russians across the country to stream to impromptu memorials with flowers and candles. The Russian authorities as they seek to suppress any major outpouring of sympathy for Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe ahead of the presidential election he is
Navalny鈥檚 mother has filed a lawsuit at a court in Salekhard contesting officials鈥� refusal to release her son鈥檚 body. A closed-door hearing has been scheduled for March 4. On Tuesday, she appealed to Putin to release her son鈥檚 remains so that she could bury him with dignity.
In the video released Thursday, Navalnaya said she had spent nearly 24 hours in the Salekhard office of the Investigative Committee, where officials told her that they have determined the politician's cause of death and have the paperwork ready, but she has to agree to a secret funeral.
鈥淭hey want to take me to the outskirts of the cemetery to a fresh grave and say: 鈥楬ere lies your son.鈥� I don鈥檛 agree to this. I want you too 鈥� to whom Alexey is dear, for whom his death was a personal tragedy 鈥� to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him,鈥� she said.
Navalnaya accused the authorities of threatening her: 鈥淟ooking into my eyes, they say that if I do not agree to a secret funeral, they will do something with my son鈥檚 body. Investigator Voropayev openly told me: 鈥楾ime is not on your side, the corpse is decomposing',鈥� she said, reiterating her demand to release her son's body "immediately."
Navalny鈥檚 death has deprived the of its best-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Putin another six years in power. Many Russians had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Putin鈥檚 .
Since Navalny鈥檚 death, about 400 people across in Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests. Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression across the country that were being used as sites to leave makeshift tributes to Navalny. Police removed the flowers at night, but more keep appearing.
Earlier Thursday, imprisoned opposition figure urged Russians not to give up after 's death, and he alleged that a state-backed hit squad was taking out the Kremlin鈥檚 political opponents, according to a video posted to social media.
A British-Russian citizen, Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence for treason at Penal Colony No. 7 in the Siberian city of Omsk. His comments came as he appeared via a video link in a court hearing over a complaint against Russia's Investigative Committee for what he believes were two poisoning attempts against him. He alleges the committee didn't properly investigate the attempts.
Kara-Murza is one of multiple who have either been imprisoned, forced to flee the country or killed. He was convicted over publicly criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and was handed a stiff sentence as part of a crackdown against critics of the war and freedom of speech.
鈥淲e owe it ... to our fallen comrades to continue to work with even greater strength and achieve what they lived and died for,鈥� Kara-Murza said in the video, which was shared by the Russian Sota telegram channel.
Kara-Murza says the attempts to poison him took place in 2015 and 2017. In the first, he nearly died of kidney failure, although no cause was determined. He was hospitalized with a similar illness in 2017 and put into a medically induced coma. His wife said doctors confirmed he was poisoned.
According to the video shared by Sota, Kara-Murza alleged there is a 鈥渄eath squad within the Federal Security Service, a group of professional killers in the service of the state, whose task is to physically eliminate .鈥�
He said investigative journalists had shown the group of FSB officers participated in his poisoning, as well as Navalny's poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 and the surveillance of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov before he was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the illnesses and deaths of the opposition figures, including Navalny.
Navalny's widow, , said Thursday on her Instagram account that she had flown to visit her 20-year-old daughter, Dasha, a student at Stanford University.
鈥淢y dear girl, I came to hug you and support you, and you sit and support me鈥� she wrote under a photo of herself and her daughter lying on a carpet.
Describing her daughter as 鈥渟trong, brave and resilient,鈥� Navalnaya said the family would 鈥渄efinitely cope with everything.鈥� She also has a 15-year-old son, Zakhar.
In a video on Monday, also accusing Putin of killing her husband and alleged the refusal to release his body was part of a cover-up.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations, calling them 鈥渁bsolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state.鈥�
The Associated Press
