Alexei Navalny mother’s plea to Putin: Give me my son’s body so I can bury him with dignity

Her appeal came as the Kremlin initiated a new criminal case against Oleg Navalny, signalling its intention to continue the pressure on his family as they seek to mourn the fierce Putin critic

The mother of dead Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has issued a direct plea to Vladimir Putin for the release of her son’s body so she can “bury him with dignity”.

In a video filmed outside the Arctic penal colony where he died on Friday, Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, said she had been trying to see him for five days but didn’t even know where he was being kept.

“Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him in a humane way,” she said from the village of Kharp, some 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow, where it is minus 10C.

Russian opposition leader Navalny was critical of Putin and so became the victim of repeated aggression from the state (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty)

The fierce critic of the Russian president died last week, aged 47, sparking outrage from Western leaders and Navalny’s supporters who accuse Mr Putin of being responsible for snuffing out the most significant beacon of opposition to his leadership, in the run-up to next month’s presidential elections.

Russian authorities have said the cause of Navalny’s death is still unknown and refused to release his body for two weeks while they carry out “chemical examinations”, members of his team said on Monday, raising fears he may have been poisoned, having survived a previous nerve agent attack in 2020.

Ahead of a meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, released a video in which she vowed to unmask her husband’s killers and alleged that the refusal to release his body was part of a cover-up.

“My husband was unbreakable. And that’s precisely why Putin killed him. Shamefully, cowardly, without ever daring to look him in the eye or just say his name,” Ms Navalnaya said.

“And just as shamefully and cowardly, they are now hiding his body, not showing it to his mother, not giving it back, and pathetically lying and waiting for traces of another Putin novichok to disappear.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations of a cover-up, telling reporters that “these are absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state”.

But Ms Navalnaya retorted on Tuesday: “I don’t care how the killer’s press secretary comments on my words. Give Alexei’s body back and let him be buried with dignity. Do not prevent people from saying goodbye to him.

“And I really ask all journalists who may still ask questions: don’t ask about me, ask about Alexei.”

Meanwhile, there was uproar on Tuesday when X/Twitter briefly banned her social media account. Yulia set up her account on Monday, days after Navalny’s death was announced, and has since used it to commit to holding Mr Putin to account.

However, the account disappeared and was replaced with a message indicating that it had been suspended because it had broken the site’s rules, before reappearing an hour later. X/Twitter said the suspension had been in error.

Her powerful plea came as the Kremlin initiated a new criminal case against Oleg Navalny, the brother of Alexei, according to Russian media.

The politician was pronounced dead by the Russian prison service last week (Getty)

The reports did not say under which article of the criminal code the case had been opened but said police were searching for Oleg, who was already on the wanted list in connection with another matter. In 2014, he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for fraud in a case Kremlin critics said was trumped up and designed to pile pressure on his late brother.

The move signals the Kremlin’s intention to continue the pressure on his family and supporters as they seek to mourn the dissident. According to monitoring group OVD-Info, nearly 400 people had been detained at Navalny vigils in 39 cities across Russia as of Monday morning.

International pressure continued to ramp up on Tuesday, with the White House announcing a new package of sanctions against Russia, set to go into effect imminently. The administration said the package would be released on Friday.

US president Joe Biden has blamed Mr Putin for Navalny’s death, noting that while Washington was unsure what took place, it was “a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did”.

Meanwhile, Italy, Poland, France, Belgium and the European Union itself became the latest powers to summon Russia’s respective ambassadors over Navalny’s death.

Mr Putin, who famously has avoided speaking Navalny’s name, has not commented publicly on the matter. However, on Monday he signed a decree promoting a number of law enforcement and military officials, including Valery Boyarinev, the first deputy chief of the State Penitentiary Service who was accused of torturing Navalny in his final stint in the Siberian jail.

Putin has famously avoided speaking Alexei Navalny’s name (AP)

Mr Boyarinev, who received the rank of colonel-general, has been accused by Navalny’s team of personally ordering restrictions on the opposition leader.

Initially a nationalist politician, Navalny rose to fame as an anti-corruption campaigner who soon began to take aim at “madman” Mr Putin and his regime of “crooks and thieves”, fomenting protests against the Kremlin before managing to secure 27 per cent of the vote in tightly controlled Moscow mayoral elections in 2013.

Following repeated arrests, investigations, and criminal proceedings, Navalny was finally evacuated to Germany in a coma after being poisoned with novichok in Russia. Upon his return in 2021, he was arrested at the airport and sentenced to two and half years of a formerly suspended jail term for alleged fraud.

The following year, he was sentenced to nine years on charges of spending donations to his Anti-Corruption Foundation on “extremism and personal needs”. Already listed by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, he was sentenced to a further 19 years on a raft of “extremism” charges in 2023.

He went missing for three weeks in December before turning up at the notorious Arctic penal colony, where he was to die only weeks later.