Supporters of detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny have charged the Kremlin of “dealing with their tracks” as questions remain regarding the whereabouts of his remains and what it might indicate about his manner of death, 2 days after the leader died in captivity.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of Navalny, and her lawyer traveled to the infamous “Polar Wolf” IK-3 penal colony in Russia’s Arctic north across the weekend in an attempt to locate her son’s body.
However, they got conflicting information about the location of the body from multiple institutions, so they left without witnessing her son getting better. Navalny had been detained there since a year ago.
Thousands of individuals have been arrested in Russia for participating in vigils in memory of the 47-year-old. As anger over his demise grew, the EU’s top foreign policy official announced that Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Navalny, was going to address the 27 foreign ministers of the bloc on Monday. She shared a picture of herself and her spouse on Instagram on Sunday that included the words “I love you.” Leaders in the West have declared that they blame the Kremlin for his demise.
Lyudmila, who, in contrast to Yulia and Navalny’s children, is still in Russia, was initially informed that her son’s body had been sent to Salekhard, a town near the jail complex. However, on Saturday, she went to the morgue only to find it closed.
Kira Yarmysh, a spokesman for Navalny, claimed that “they’re spinning us around in circles and hiding their tracks.”
Navalny’s mother and attorney were also informed that the reason for his death was “unexpected death syndrome,” an ambiguous term that encompasses a variety of heart diseases that result in unexpected cardiac arrest and death, according to Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. According to anonymous sources reported by the independent news source Novaya Gazeta Europe, Navalny’s body was sent to the Salekhard district clinical hospital mortuary on Sunday.