Moscow, 22 February 2024 (dpa/MIA) - The mother of Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison camp, has been granted access to his body after days of waiting.

 

Lyudmila Navalnaya was shown her son's body in the morgue but was not given it, she said in a video posted online on Thursday.

 

According to the authorities, Navalny died on Friday in a prison camp in the Russian polar region. Since then, his mother has been trying to retrieve his body.

 

In the video, she again demanded that the body be handed over to her so that she could bury him. She has accused Moscow of wanting to secretly bury Navalny.

 

"They set conditions as to where, when and how I should bury Alexei. This is against the law," Lyudmila Navalnaya said.

 

The investigators threatened to do something with the body if she did not agree to a secret burial, she asserted.

 

Navalnaya said she turned to the public because relatives, but also supporters, should have the opportunity to say goodbye to Navalny.

 

Navalny's mother also said that she had been informed of the completion of the medical examination, including the cause of death. But she didn't name them.

 

Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on the online platform X, formerly known as Twitter, shortly after the mother's video was published that medical expertise had allegedly determined a natural death.

 

The politician, who was weakened after having been poisoned in 2020 and by repeated stints in solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed during an exercise period in the prison yard at freezing temperatures and died despite resuscitation attempts. He was 47 years old. The cause of his death is unclear.

 

Meanwhile Navalny's widow Yulia has published a picture of her mourning with their grieving daughter Dasha.

 

"My sweet little girl. I flew to you to hug and support you, but you are sitting there supporting me," Yulia Navalnaya wrote in a post published on Instagram on Thursday. "You are so strong, so brave and steadfast. We can handle anything, my heart. How good that you are by my side. I love you."

 

Navalnaya has a 15-year-old son as well as 23-year-old Dasha.

 

Dasha Navalnaya has repeatedly made demands for the release of her imprisoned father and had also given speeches in his honour at award ceremonies. She is studying at Stanford University in the United States.

 

Navalny's widow did not immediately travel to see her children on Friday, but instead visited the Munich Security Conference, where she blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for her husband's fate.

 

On Monday, she was a guest in Brussels at the meeting of EU foreign ministers, and also published a video with a challenge to Putin. She said she wanted to continue her husband's work in challenging corruption within the Russian government system.

 

Meanwhile, Russia's ex-president Dmitry Medvedev verbally attacked the dead man and his widow in an interview he published on his Telegram channel.

 

He began by commenting that he could not could not find anything good to say about Navalny, and went on to criticize his widow. "Look at the smiling, happy face of Navalny's widow. It seems as if she has been waiting all these years to start her political career," he claimed, in defiance of the many pictures showing her grief.

 

Navalnaya retorted on X, formerly Twitter, that the Russian power apparatus only sent Medvedev forward so that people would focus their attention on him - and not on Putin.

 

She added: "Write about the fact that Putin killed Alexei. Write about it every day. As long as your strength lasts," she wrote.

 

Navalny's team responded by calling Medvedev a "lousy scumbag".

 

According to the authorities, Navalny died on February 16 in the prison camp with the unofficial name Polar Wolf, in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal.

 

Photo: EPA