Alexey Navalny’s mother is shown his body, says Russian authorities are “blackmailing” her to have secret burial

The mom of Russia’s high opposition chief Alexey Navalny mentioned Thursday that she has seen her son’s physique and that she is resisting sturdy stress by authorities to comply with a secret burial outdoors the general public eye. Talking in a video assertion from the Arctic metropolis of Salekhard, Lyudmila Navalnaya mentioned investigators have allowed her to see her son’s physique within the metropolis morgue.

She mentioned she reaffirmed the demand to offer Navalny’s physique to her and protested what she described as authorities making an attempt to power her to comply with a secret burial.

“They’re blackmailing me, they’re setting situations the place, when and the way my son needs to be buried,” she mentioned. “They need it to do it secretly and not using a mourning ceremony.”

Navalny’s mom has filed a lawsuit at a court docket in Salekhard contesting officers’ refusal to launch her son’s physique. A closed-door listening to has been scheduled for March 4. On Tuesday, she appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch her son’s stays in order that she may bury him with dignity.

Within the U.S., President Biden plans to punish Putin for Navalny’s demise with a significant new round of sanctions that is anticipated to be introduced on Friday, CBS Information chief White Home correspondent Nancy Cordes stories. White Home officers advised CBS Information that the sanctions shall be geared toward Russia’s protection sector and components of the Russian financial system that energy the nation’s “struggle machine.”

Navalny’s demise has disadvantaged the Russian opposition of its best-known and provoking politician lower than a month earlier than an election that’s all however sure to offer Putin one other six years in energy. Many Russians had seen Navalny as a uncommon hope for political change amid Putin’s unrelenting crackdown on the opposition.

Since Navalny’s demise, about 400 individuals have been detained throughout Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, in accordance with OVD-Information, a bunch that screens political arrests. Authorities cordoned off a few of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression throughout the nation that had been getting used as websites to go away makeshift tributes to Navalny. Police removed the flowers at night time, however extra preserve showing.

Earlier Thursday, imprisoned opposition determine Vladimir Kara-Murza urged Russians not to surrender after Navalny’s demise, and he alleged a state-backed hit squad was taking out the Kremlin’s political opponents, in accordance with 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 within the Siberian metropolis of Omsk. His feedback got here as he appeared by way of a video hyperlink in a court docket listening to over a grievance in opposition to Russia’s Investigative Committee for what he believes had been two poisoning makes an attempt in opposition to him. He alleges the committee did not correctly examine the makes an attempt.

Kara-Murza is one among a number of opposition figures who’ve both been imprisoned, pressured to flee the nation or killed. He was convicted of criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was handed a stiff sentence as a part of a crackdown in opposition to critics of the struggle and freedom of speech.

“We owe it … to our fallen comrades to proceed to work with even higher power and obtain what they lived and died for,” Kara-Murza mentioned within the video, which was shared by the Russian Sota Telegram channel.

Kara-Murza says the makes an attempt to poison him came about in 2015 and 2017. Within the first, he almost died of kidney failure, though no trigger was decided. He was hospitalized with an analogous sickness in 2017 and put right into a medically induced coma. His spouse mentioned medical doctors confirmed he was poisoned.

Kara-Murza’s newest listening to got here after months of postponements. In January, he was moved from one other jail in Siberia and positioned in solitary confinement over an alleged minor infraction.

Based on the video shared by Sota, Kara-Murza alleged there’s a “demise squad throughout the Federal Safety Service, a bunch {of professional} killers within the service of the state, whose activity is to bodily get rid of political opponents of the Putin regime.”

He mentioned investigative journalists had proven the group of FSB officers participated in his poisoning, in addition to Navalny’s poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 and the surveillance of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov earlier than he was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge close to the Kremlin.

On Monday, Ilya Yashin, an opposition determine serving 8 1/2 years in jail for criticizing Russia’s struggle in Ukraine, alleged in a social media submit shared on his behalf that Putin had killed Navalny.

“I’ve little question that it was Putin. He is a struggle legal,” Yashin mentioned. “Navalny was his key opponent in Russia and was hated by the Kremlin. Putin had each motive and alternative. I’m satisfied that he ordered the killing.”

“I really feel a black vacancy inside,” he mentioned, including that he’ll proceed to talk out although he believes he’s additionally in peril.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement within the sicknesses and deaths of the opposition figures, together with Navalny.

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, mentioned Thursday on her Instagram account that she had flown to go to her 20-year-old daughter, Dasha, a pupil at Stanford College.

“My expensive lady, I got here to hug you and help you, and also you sit and help me” she wrote below a photograph of herself and her daughter mendacity on a carpet.

Describing her daughter as “sturdy, courageous and resilient,” Navalnaya mentioned the household would “positively address all the pieces.” She additionally has a 15-year-old son, Zakhar.

Russian authorities have mentioned the reason for Navalny’s demise continues to be unknown and have refused to launch his physique for 2 weeks because the preliminary inquest continues, his staff mentioned. It accused the federal government of stalling to attempt to conceal proof.

In a video on Monday, Yulia Navalnaya additionally accusing Putin of killing her husband and alleged the refusal to launch his physique was a part of a cover-up.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations, calling them “completely unfounded, insolent accusations in regards to the head of the Russian state.”