Navalny’s mother says authorities are ‘blackmailing’ her over her son’s remains
Russian authorities have said opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny died of natural causes but are refusing to release his remains until his mother agrees to a “secret funeral,” Mr. Navalny’s mother and his spokeswoman said Thursday.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s mother, said she was taken “secretly” to a morgue on Wednesday evening, “where they showed me Aleksei.” She was shown a medical report on Mr Navalny’s death, which said he died of natural causes. according to to Navalny team spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh.
But Ms Navalnaya said she was now locked in a grim battle with local authorities in the northern Russian city of Salekhard, who did not release custody of the remains on Moscow’s orders. She said authorities warned that if she “didn’t agree to a secret burial,” “they would do something with my son’s body.”
“They are blackmailing me,” Ms. Navalnaya said in an interview video posted on her son’s YouTube channel. “They are giving me conditions about where, when and how Aleksei should be buried.”
The back-and-forth over Mr. Navalny’s remains reflects how crucial he is to Russian politics, even in death. The Kremlin appears to fear that a funeral gathering of Navalny’s supporters could become a flashpoint for protest. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities on Ms Navalnaya’s claims.
“They want to take me to the edge of a cemetery, to a new grave and say, ‘Here lies your son,’” Ms. Navalnaya said in her video from Salekhard, the closest town to the Arctic prison where Mr. Navalny was last held died. week. “I don’t agree with this. I want those of you who appreciated Aleksei and consider his death as a personal tragedy to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him.”
As the drama unfolded, President Vladimir V. Putin remained silent about Mr. Navalny and continued his publicity tour that seemed focused on next month’s presidential election — a rubber-stamp issue that Mr. Putin is certain to win but which the Kremlin expected to win. to demonstrate Mr Putin’s legitimacy.
On Thursday, Putin made a short flight with a supersonic bomber, a stunt that was also a striking reminder to the West of his country’s status as a nuclear superpower.
The flight lasted just 30 minutes, the Kremlin said a statementbut the range of the wide-wing Tu-160M, also known in Russia as the White Swan, allows it to reach the United States with two dozen nuclear weapons on board.
Russian state television showed Putin, 71, climbing the stairs beneath the giant fighter plane, one of the largest and heaviest in the world, before it took off from the runway of an airport in Kazan, a city east of Moscow. The Kremlin has been released a video of Mr Putin’s flight, on which he sits in a pilot’s seat.
As he stepped off the plane, Mr. Putin told reporters that the flight left a good impression and praised the new, modernized bomber as “very reliable.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov told state television that Putin spontaneously made the decision to take the flight on Thursday when he visited an aviation factory in Kazan, where he inspected four modernized Tu-160M bombers.
But since he became president of Russia more than two decades ago, Putin has become known for publicity stunts designed to portray him as a strong leader of a great power.
During this time, Mr Putin has flown in a fighter jet, plunged into the sea in a submarine and… sent Siberian cranes to their winter habitat in a motorized hang glider. The widespread stunts projected Mr Putin as a physically fit and fearless leader.
The bomber flight appeared to be an attempt to send a sharp message amid the most dire geopolitical conflict between Moscow and the West since the darkest times of the Cold War.