Russia’s Investigative Committee gave Aleksei Navalny’s mother an ultimatum that she immediately agree to bury his body without a public ceremony or they would inter him on a site at the Arctic prison where he died a week ago, Kira Yarmysh, the former press secretary of the Kremlin critic, said in a statement.
Yarmysh said an official from the Investigative Committee called Lyudmila Navalnaya around 5 p.m. Moscow time and said that, if she didn’t agree to the ultimatum within three hours, her son’s body would be buried at the so-called “Arctic Wolf” correctional colony.
Yarmysh said Navalnaya refused to negotiate with the official, saying the Investigative Committee had no legal right to decide where and how her son should be buried. Navalnaya wants to hold a funeral and farewell ceremony in accordance with traditions, Yarmysh wrote.
RFE/RL could not immediately verify whether an ultimatum had been given. Neither the prison authorities nor the Investigative Committee have publicly commented on the matter.
Russian law states that authorities must turn over a body to family members within two days after the cause of death is officially established. Yarmysh said Navalnaya demanded that the authorities adhere to the law and release her son’s body by February 24, when the two-day period expires.
A day earlier, Lyudmila Navalnaya said in a video posted to social media that investigators had allowed her to see her son’s body late on February 21 in the Arctic city of Salekhard, but refused to hand it over for burial.
Navalnaya said she signed her son’s death certificate.
Family and friends have said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said Putin murdered her husband.
‘Proper Farewell’
Navalnaya said she wants her son’s burial to be public so that all his supporters can bid a proper farewell to the anti-corruption crusader.
Navalnaya has been trying to get access to her son’s body since his death in the harsh Arctic penitentiary was announced on February 16. Prison officials said the 47-year-old died after he collapsed while on a daily walk outside of his cell.
On February 21, Navalnaya filed a lawsuit in a Russian court demanding the release of her son’s body. A closed-door hearing into the complaint is scheduled for March 4, which roughly coincides with the time frame authorities have said they need to perform “chemical forensics” on Navalny’s body.
Rights groups and Navalny’s associates have accused authorities of holding the body to allow them to hide the cause of death.
Earlier on February 23, Navalny’s associates published video statements of many leading Russian public figures urging authorities to immediately release Navalny’s body.
The group included 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Dmitry Muratov, prominent Latvian-American ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, a founding member of the Pussy Riot protest group, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, writers Mikhail Zygar and Viktor Shenderovich, historian Tamara Eidelman, television journalist Tatyana Lazareva, popular rock musician Andrei Makarevich, rapper Noize MC (Ivan Alekseyev), businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, and many other noted public figures, nearly all of whom are living in exile.
Ivan Zhdanov, the former head of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said in an interview with Current Time on February 23 that the authorities are refusing to hand over the Kremlin critic’s body above all else to hide evidence of his murder. But he also said they fear a public funeral will attract a “massive” crowd of Navalny supporters who come, flowers in hand, to say their last goodbyes.
“They don’t want to see it, they don’t want it to happen,” Zhdanov said.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a self-exiled leading Russian opposition figure, agreed with that assessment, saying a public funeral could trigger “large-scale confrontations” between Navalny supporters and law enforcement.
“The authorities do not want people to grasp how many of them oppose Putin. The main task of Putin’s propaganda is to convince people that if they are against Putin, they are on the margins,” the former oil tycoon said in a February 23 interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
“If people see that there are really a lot of them…then the situation can change in seconds,” he said.
Navalny was Russia’s most popular opposition leader with a large, dedicated following around the country. He had organized some of the biggest public protests in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Tens of thousands of citizens would heed his calls to demonstrate against Putin’s rule despite the threat of arrest.
In 2013, Navalny ran for mayor of Moscow, the nation’s capital and largest city, receiving more than a quarter of the vote despite censorship by state television.
Foreign Pressure
Diplomatic pressure on Moscow continues to mount over Navalny’s death as well.
The United States and the European Union on February 23 announced fresh sanctions on Russia in retaliation for Navalny’s death ahead of the second anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
U.S. President Joe Biden has announced a fresh package of more than 500 sanctions against Russia to “ensure [Russian President Vladimir ] Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.”
Washington said it was imposing export restrictions on nearly 100 entities that are helping Russia to evade trade sanctions and are “providing backdoor support for Russia’s war machine.”
Biden’s announcement came after the European Union announced its 13th package of sanctions against Russia. targeting the country’s defense industry and slapping asset freezes and travel bans on 106 individuals and 88 organizations.