The spokeswoman of the russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, has said his body has been given to his mother just over a week after he died in jail.
This is a tweet by Kiri Yarmish. She said that the body was handed over. Alexei Navalny’s mother has been in the Arctic near the prison camp where he died. He died Friday last week, and she’s been trying to get the release of this body. She and Mr. Navalny’s allies have been saying she’s been blackmailed, put under pressure to allow the russian authorities to bury his body in secret, with the threat being that if they didn’t allow that, with no mourners present, then he would be, in fact, buried at the prison camp itself.
Alexei Navalny: Body of Russian opposition leader
So it’s a big development. It’s not clear yet when a funeral for Alexei Navalny will take place. Miss Yarmish said she thanked people for putting pressure on the russian authorities, but she said it’s not clear whether the authorities, what type of funeral they’ll allow, whether it will be the sort of one that the family and Alexei Navalny himself want and deserve.
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There was an absolutely excoriating attack, six minute attack, directed personally towards Vladimir Putin. So Alexei Navalny’s wife, Julian Novalnia, she accused him, again of having murdered Alexei Navalny in jail. That’s something that the Kremlin, of course, denies. But she also took issue at the way that she said they’d been torturing him in life, but also in death and torturing his mother, too, about his body. And she said basically that the way that Mr. Putin personally was treating Mr. Navalny’s body was actually satanic.
She criticized him for his professed orthodox christian faith. That’s something that Mr. Putin himself makes big public play of. And so above, photos and images of President Putin gazing at russian icons, kissing saints’relics and even going swimming in an ice bath for epiphany in the shape of a cross.
She said basically, his religion was he was not showing any type of christian values in the way he was treating her husband’s body. So it was very, very personal. And obviously, faith really matters in Russia, there’s a large percentage of the population which are very. They adhere to the Christian orthodox faith. The church itself is highly controlled by the state, but it’s a powerful medium. And she contrasted the way President Putin was bathing with her own husband’s christian values, which she said meant a lot to him.