Body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been returned to his mother, aide says

The body of Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, a top aide to the Russian opposition leader said Saturday on his social media account.

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, made the announcement on his Telegram account and thanked “everyone” who had called on Russian authorities to return the body.

Navalny, 47, died Feb. 16 in an Arctic penal colony.

Earlier Saturday, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of mocking Christianity by trying to force Navalny’s mother to agree to a secret funeral.

“Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone who wrote and recorded video messages. You all did what you needed to do. Thank you. Alexei Navalny’s body has been given to his mother,” Zhdanov wrote.

Prominent Russians released videos calling on authorities to release the body, and Western nations have hit Russia with more sanctions as punishment for Navalny’s death as well as its invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, is still in Salekhard, a town near the prison, his press secretary Kira Yarmysh said on X. Lyudmila Navalnaya has been in the Arctic region for more than a week, demanding that Russian authorities return the body of her son.

“The funeral is still pending,” Yarmysh posted, questioning whether authorities will allow it to go ahead “as the family wants and as Alexei deserves.”

Yulia Navalnaya said in a video that Navalny’s mother was being “literally tortured” by authorities who had threatened to bury him in the prison. They suggested to his mother that she did not have much time to make a decision because the body was decomposing, Yulia Navalnaya said.

“Give us the body of my husband,” she said earlier Saturday. “You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead.”

She accused Putin, an Orthodox Christian, of killing her husband.

“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexei,” she said. “What will you do with his corpse? How low will you sink to mock the man you murdered?”

Yarmysh has said Navalny’s mother was shown a medical certificate stating that her son died of “natural causes,” but questions remain, and many global leaders blame Putin. Over the years, critics of the Kremlin, spies and journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways. Navalny in 2020 survived a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

Authorities have detained scores of people as they seek to suppress a major outpouring of sympathy for Putin’s fiercest foe before the presidential election he is almost certain to win.

The arrests continued Saturday, nine days after Navalny’s death, when Orthodox Christians traditionally hold a memorial service. People across Russia marked the day by gathering at Orthodox churches, holding one-person protests or leaving flowers at public monuments.

Muscovites lined up outside the Christ the Savior Cathedral to pay their respects, according to photos and videos published by independent Russian news outlet SOTAvision. The video shows Russian police stationed nearby and stopping several people to check IDs.

At least 38 people had been detained in Russia for showing support for Navalny, according to the OVD-Info rights group, which tracks political arrests. They include Elena Osipova, a 78-year-old artist from St. Petersburg who stood in a street with a poster of Navalny with angel wings, and Sergei Karabatov, 64, who laid flowers at a Moscow monument to victims of political repression, along with a handwritten note saying, “Don’t think this is the end.” Also arrested was Aida Nuriyeva, from the city of Ufa near the Ural Mountains, who stood in a street with a sign saying, “Putin is Navalny’s murderer! I demand that the body be returned!”

Putin is often pictured at church, dunking himself in ice water to celebrate the Epiphany and visiting holy sites in Russia. He has promoted what he has called “traditional values,” without which, he once said, “society degrades.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called allegations that Putin was involved in Navalny’s death “absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations.”

Musician Nadya Tolokonnikova, who became widely known after spending nearly two years in prison for taking part in a 2012 protest with her band Pussy Riot inside Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, was one of many prominent Russians who had accused Putin of hypocrisy and asked him to release Navalny’s body.

“We were imprisoned for allegedly trampling on traditional values. But no one tramples on traditional Russian values more than you, Putin, your officials and your priests who pray for all the murder that you do, year after year, day after day,” Tolokonnikova, who lives abroad, said in a video. “Putin, have a conscience, give his mother the body of her son.”