She said: “I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin, that the solution to this issue depends on you alone.” “Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be handed over immediately so I can give him a humane burial.” The video was posted on Navalny’s YouTube channel.
The director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, also published a letter written by Navalnaya and addressed to Putin.
Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Monday that local investigators had refused to hand over the body to his family, and it would be detained for two weeks to conduct a “chemical experiment.” Yarmysh said Navalny's team believes authorities are delaying the release of the body “to hide traces of the murder.”
The direct appeal from the Russian leader, whom Navalny's family and allies have personally blamed for his death, mirrors a plea from Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, to Putin in August 2020 asking the president to allow her to fly him to Germany for treatment after he died. I got sick from poisoning.
After Navalny lost consciousness on a flight from Moscow to Tomsk, doctors in a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk put him into a coma, and local authorities refused to allow Yulia Navalnaya or Navalny's personal doctors into the room to see him.
One day later, Yulia Navalnaya wrote a letter to Putin asking to see her husband and take him to a hospital in Berlin, to save his life. Medical experts later concluded that he had been poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.
Yulia Navalnaya announced on Monday that she would continue her husband's work in fighting Putin's grip on power, and placed the blame squarely on the Russian leader for Alexei's death. She said: “My husband cannot be broken, and that is precisely why Putin killed him in the most cowardly way.”
She added cryptically: “We know exactly why Putin killed Alexei three days ago. “We'll let you know soon.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday described Navalnaya's comments as “crude and baseless” but ignored them, noting that Navalnaya had just become a widow.
Yulia Navalnaya issued a quick response on X, formerly Twitter. “I don’t care how the killer’s press secretary comments on my words,” she wrote. “Return Alexei’s body and let him be buried with dignity. Don’t prevent people from saying goodbye to him.”
