“Putin didn’t solely homicide the particular person, Alexei Navalny,” she mentioned, clad in black and her voice sometimes trembling throughout the dramatic video tackle. “He needed, together with him, to kill our hope, our freedom, our future.”
Navalnaya additionally accused the Russian authorities of refusing at hand over Navalny’s physique to his 69-year-old mom so they may cowl up the reason for loss of life.
“They lie pathetically, and watch for the traces of one other Putin’s Novichok to vanish there,” mentioned Navalnaya, referring to the category of nerve agent that worldwide investigators mentioned Russian safety brokers utilized in an August 2020 try to assassinate her husband.
“My husband couldn’t be damaged, and that’s precisely why Putin killed him, in essentially the most cowardly means,” she continued. “He didn’t have the braveness to look him within the eye and even say his title. And now they’re additionally cowardly, hiding his physique, not displaying him to his mom, not giving it to her.”
Three days after Navalny’s sudden loss of life Friday, the placement of his physique was nonetheless unclear on Monday and his mom, Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, was once more rebuffed by morgue officers within the Arctic city of Salekhard, 33 miles from the jail colony the place he died, Navalny’s press secretary mentioned.
Navalny’s grieving household and political workforce have demanded the return of his stays since Saturday however have confronted an prolonged, nearly surreal, battle to get well his physique and even to ascertain its location — with Russian officers seemingly decided to hinder any impartial investigation into the reason for loss of life and delay a funeral.
Navalnaya was in Brussels on Monday to handle European Union international ministers who invited her in a present of solidarity and as a follow-up to her emotional look on the Munich Safety Convention on Friday shortly after the information broke of her husband’s loss of life.
In her video assertion, Navalnaya vowed that she and her husband’s workforce would discover out these immediately accountable for her husband’s loss of life and expose precisely the way it was performed. “We’ll title names and present faces. However the primary factor we will do for Alexei and for ourselves is to maintain preventing,” she mentioned.
“I’ll proceed the work of Alexei Navalny,” Navalnaya proclaimed, including:
“By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my coronary heart and half of my soul. However I nonetheless have the opposite half, and it tells me that I’ve no proper to surrender. I’ll proceed Alexei Navalny’s trigger.”
She additionally immediately addressed one of many resonant questions within the West about her husband: Why did he return to Russia i
n 2021 after recovering from the poisoning assault in Germany, risking possible arrest and attainable loss of life, when he might have lived peacefully along with his household in exile?
“He couldn’t,” she mentioned, preventing again tears. “Alexei, greater than anybody on this planet, beloved Russia, beloved our nation, us. He believed in us, in our energy, in our future and in the truth that we deserve the perfect.”
On Friday, after information of her husband’s loss of life emerged, Navalnaya met with the Belarusian opposition chief, Svetlana, Tikhonovskaya, who can also be the spouse of a jailed opposition politician and political prisoner.
Tikhonovskaya took the place of her husband, Sergey Tikhonovsky, as a presidential candidate in August 2020, after he was arrested that Might — two days after he introduced his intention to run within the elections towards Belarusian chief Alexander Lukashenko. Sergey Tikhonovsky stays in jail.
Tikhonovskaya, who now lives in exile in Lithuania, claimed victory within the Aug. 9 election, nevertheless Lukashenko clung to energy triggering the most important road protests in Belarusian historical past and stunning authorities in Minsk and Moscow.
Eleven days later, on Aug. 20, Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent. Navalny later teamed up with Bellingcat, the investigative information group, and managed to show {that a} workforce of brokers from Russia’s Federal Safety Service, or FSB, was accountable for monitoring and poisoning him.
They recognized most of the brokers by title. Navalny telephoned one and tricked him into confessing his function within the failed assassination try.
Navalny’s mom, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has not been allowed to see his physique. She traveled on Saturday to the Polar Wolf jail simply above the Arctic Circle within the Yamalo-Nenets area, the place he died, and to the native morgue. Jail officers gave her a paper displaying a time of loss of life — 2:17 p.m. — however morgue officers denied that they had the physique.
After the Russian newspaper in exile Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that Navalny’s physique was certainly on the morgue in Salekhard, the regional capital, Lyudmila Navalnaya and Navalny’s attorneys went to the morgue early Monday morning and have been once more denied entry, Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, who lives exterior Russia, posted on X.
“They weren’t allowed to go in. One of many attorneys was actually pushed out,” Yarmysh, wrote. “When the employees was requested if Alexei’s physique was there, they didn’t reply.”
Members of Navalny’s workforce have additionally known as his loss of life a “homicide,” whereas many world leaders, together with President Biden, have mentioned Putin bears accountability for his loss of life.
Amid fears that the actual explanation for loss of life could by no means be recognized, Yarmysh mentioned officers from Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles main crimes, had prolonged their inquiry into the matter.
“They don’t say how lengthy it would take. The reason for loss of life continues to be ‘unknown.’ They lie, purchase time for themselves and don’t even cover it,” Yarmysh mentioned.
On Saturday, Lyudmila Navalnaya was initially informed by jail officers that her son died of “sudden loss of life syndrome,” with Investigative Committee officers later providing contradictory accounts, stating that the trigger was unknown.
Putin, who has lengthy made a degree of nearly by no means uttering Navalny’s title, has made no remark in regards to the loss of life of the activist, who was considered for greater than a decade because the Russian chief’s most charismatic opponent.
Navalny was barred from working within the 2018 Russian presidential election towards Putin, after his unexpectedly robust displaying within the 2013 Moscow mayoral race.
Navalny confronted quite a few legal costs, which he and plenty of impartial analysts mentioned have been trumped up for political retribution.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, mentioned Monday that Putin had made no response to Navalny’s loss of life and that the Kremlin was “not engaged” within the matter of the return of his physique to his household. Requested whether or not the Kremlin was involved about making certain a radical investigation into the reason for loss of life, Peskov replied: “These actions which might be stipulated by Russian laws are being carried out.”
“The investigation into Navalny’s loss of life is underway, and the required actions are being carried out,” he mentioned. “However the outcomes haven’t but been made public. It’s not recognized about them.”
Peskov additionally criticized world leaders who mentioned the Russian president was accountable for Navalny’s loss of life, calling it “completely unacceptable to make such blatantly boorish statements.”
Tens of hundreds of Russians have signed appeals for Navalny’s physique to be returned to his household and for them to be granted entry to the video-camera and body-camera footage from the jail and its employees.
Greater than 50,000 signed a petition organized by OVD-Data, a authorized rights group, to the Investigative Committee demanding the return of his physique to the household, and greater than 20,500 individuals signed a petition mounted by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov, demanding that the household be granted entry to the surveillance footage from the jail.
Unbiased Russian media outlet Mediazona printed video Sunday of a convoy, together with two police vehicles and a jail van, touring on Friday night time from the Polar Wolf jail colony towards Salekhard, probably carrying Navalny’s physique.
Novaya Gazeta Europe, quoting an ambulance paramedic, reported that Navalny’s physique was initially taken to a district hospital in Salekhard, as an alternative of on to the morgue as is customary within the case of jail deaths. The physique was later transferred to the morgue, in accordance with the paramedic.
Natalia Abbakumova and Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.