Aleksei Navalny's family and close associates have confirmed the Russian opposition politician's death in an Arctic prison and have demanded his body be handed over, but officials have refused to release it, telling his lawyers and mother that an "investigation" of the causes would only be completed next week.
"Aleksei's lawyer and his mother have arrived at the morgue in Salekhard," Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on X, referring to the capital of the region of Yamalo-Nenets, where Navalny's prison is located.
"It's closed. However, the [prison] has assured them it's working and Navalny's body is there. The lawyer called the phone number which was on the door. He was told he was the seventh caller today. Aleksei's body is not in the morgue," she added.
Yarmysh then said in a new message: "An hour ago, the lawyers were told that the check was completed and no crime had been found. They literally lie every time, drive in circles and cover their tracks."
But in a third message, she said, "Now the Investigative Committee directly says that until the check is completed, Aleksei’s body will not be given to relatives."
Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov, who currently resides abroad, said that Navalny's mother was told her son had died of a cardiac-arrest illness.
"When the lawyer and Aleksei’s mother arrived at the colony this morning, they were told that the cause of Navalny’s death was sudden death syndrome," Zhdanov said.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, who traveled to the Yamalo-Nenets region some 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow, was earlier informed that the Kremlin critic died at the "Arctic Wolf" prison on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. local time, according to Yarmish.
Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer who has represented Russian human rights activists, told Current Time that "what is happening is not accidental."
"The Russian authorities will do everything not to turn over the body in time or certainly not to conduct a forensic medical examination," Prokhorov told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
The penitentiary service said in a statement on February 16 that Navalny felt unwell after a walk and subsequently lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived to try to revive him but he died, the statement added.
Navalny, a longtime anti-corruption fighter and Russia's most-prominent opposition politician for over a decade, was 47.
His death sparked an immediate outpouring of grief among many Russians, while leaders around the world condenmed the death of Vladimir Putin's staunchest critic, blaming the Russian president directly for the death.
Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers meeting in Munich on the sidelines of a security conference held a minute's silence for Navalny on February 17. The G7 consists of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.
In a joint statement released by Italy, the ministers expressed their "outrage at the death in detention of Aleksei Navalny, unjustly sentenced for legitimate political activities and his fight against corruption."
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that "for his ideas and his fight for freedom and against corruption in Russia, Navalny was in fact led to his death."
"Russia must shed light on his death and stop the unacceptable repression of political dissent," he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the death of Navalny showed that it is impossible to see Putin as a legitimate leader.
"Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader or anyone who seems like a target to him," Zelenskiy told the Munich Security Conference on February 17.
Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe, told RFE/RL in Munich that Navalny will be remembered as someone who sacrificed his life for his country.
"Putin wants to be remembered as a ruler of Russia. But Navalny will be remembered in a different way because Navalny died for his country rather than for killing other people."
"He tried to show that other things are possible [in Russia] and we'll never know what kind of leader he would have been," he added.
Navalny's vision for change in Russia will be kept alive by his team, his spokeswoman Yarmysh said. "We lost our leader, but we didn't lose our ideas and our beliefs," Yarmysh told Reuters via Zoom, speaking from an undisclosed location.
Navalny's death was a "very sad day" for Russia, and must lead to international action, the wife of a former Russian agent killed by radiation poisoning said on February 17.
Marina Litvinenko, whose husband Aleksandr died of radiation poisoning in 2006, three weeks after drinking tea laced with polonium at a meeting with Russian agents at a London hotel, told AFP she had sympathy for Navalny's wife, Yulia.
The Kremlin, which Navalny said was behind a poison attack that almost killed him in 2020, has angrily denied it played any role in Navalny's death and rejected the "absolutely rabid" reaction of Western leaders.
Inside Russia, people continued to mourn the death of the anti-corruption crusader despite official media paying little attention to his death and efforts to remove any tributes to him.
At least 340 people have been detained in 30 cities and towns in Russia on February 16 and 17 after they came to pay tribute, include laying flowers, to the memory of Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political repression in Russia.
On February 17, police blocked access to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and detained several people there as well as in another Siberian city, Surgut, OVD-Info said.
In Moscow, people came to lay flowers at the "Wall of Sorrow" memorial on the avenue named after Soviet physicist and dissent Andrei Sakharov on February 17. Riot police immediately moved in and more than 15 people were arrested, the Sota news outlet reported.
In St. Petersburg, an Orthodox priest was detained on February 17 after he announced he would hold a memorial service for Navalny.
Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko was detained near his home as he was going to the Solovetsky Stone memorial dedicated to Soviet victims of political repression.
He was remanded in custody and was to be presented to a judge on February 19, the site 24liveblog.com reported.
However, a memorial service was performed by a different Orthodox priest at the site, in the presence of several people, some of whom were detained after the service was completed.
This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.
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