"Want to bury him"

Navalny’s widow demands the return of his body

(Bild: AFP)

The widow of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in Russian custody, is demanding that the authorities return her husband's body. "Give us back the body of my husband. We want to hold a funeral service and bury him in the ground in a humane way, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity," said Yulia Navalnaya in a six-minute YouTube video on Saturday.

She also made serious accusations against Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom many Western politicians have blamed for Navalny's death. Putin is personally responsible for the whereabouts of the body, says Navalnaya.

"No true Christian could do such a thing"
He tortured Navalny in death as he had done in life. "No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with Alexei's body." Her husband, on the other hand, was a devout Christian who went to church and observed Lent even in prison. Navalny's political commitment was inspired by Christian values.

Here you can see the video message from Yulia Navalnaya:

"Give grandma my father's body," wrote Navalny's daughter Darya on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday. Her grandmother Lyudmila Navalnaya had stated in a video on Thursday that Putin's authorities wanted to force her to hold a secret funeral and had threatened to harm the body. Navalny's widow accused Putin of wanting to further torture and break Alexei's mother.

"Putin instrumentalizes the church"
Although Putin stages himself in Russian Orthodox churches with a candle in his hand and kisses icons, he is actually driven by hatred and a desire for revenge, said Yulia Navalnaya. "No, it's not even hatred, it's Satanism, paganism." Faith, however, is about goodness, about mercy, about salvation. "And no true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the dead Alexei."

At the same time, the 47-year-old condemned Putin's war against Ukraine, for which he is also instrumentalizing the church. The Kremlin leader is waging the campaign against the West by invoking traditional values. "But they are simply killing, bombing sleeping civilians at night with missiles that were blessed in the church," said Navalnaya. The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, is a confidant of Putin and an ardent supporter of the war against Ukraine. Clergymen repeatedly bless missiles in public.

Cause of death still a mystery
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. The circumstances of his death have not been clarified. The politician, weakened by the poison attack and repeated solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed during a tour of the icy prison yard and died despite attempts to resuscitate him. According to Navalny's team, the death certificate mentions "natural" causes.