Yulia Navalny has released a video statement about her husband’s death (Picture: yulia_navalnaya/AP)
Alexei Navalny’s wife has accused Russian authorities of hiding his remains from his family and lawyers.
In a video posted on her newly-created X account, Yulia Navalny vowed to name those involved in her husband’s death in the Siberian penal colony.
Saying it was a video she never wanted to record, Yulia said her husband should have been the one addressing them.
‘Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband Alexei Navalny,’ she said.
‘Putin killed the father of my children. Putin took away the most precious thing I had – my most dear and the most loved man.
‘But Putin also took Navalny away from you, somewhere in a [penal] colony in the Far North, beyond the Arctic Circle, in eternal winter.
‘Putin didn’t just kill a man called Alexei Navalny. Together with him, Putin wanted to kill our hopes, our freedom, our future. To destroy and nullify it.’
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The economist, 47, said she knows ‘exactly why Putin killed Alexei’ and that his supporters will reveal why – and how – the Kremlin did so soon.
‘We will name names and show faces,’ Yulia said.
She accused prison authorities of ‘torturing’ the anti-corruption activist while he was locked up at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region.
‘Yet he not only didn’t give up, he always supported us, encouraged us, laughed, joked, and inspired,’ Yulia continued.
‘He never doubted for a fraction of a second what he was fighting for and why he was suffering. My husband couldn’t be broken, and that’s exactly why Putin killed him.
‘Shamefully, cowardly, without ever daring to look him in the eye or even say his name.’
Long at the front of anti-government protests, Navalny was among Putin’s top political foes (Picture: Getty Images Europe)
Yulia alleged that the authorities are delaying the autopsy to allow a Soviet-era nerve agent from the powerful Novichok family of toxins to ‘disappear’ from his body.
It’s a substance Navalny knows all too well. He was poisoned in 2020, becoming violently ill, falling into a coma and requiring treatment in Germany.
Navalny, the long-defiant opposition leader who braved years behind bars, a poison attack and a belligerent state press that made him public enemy number one, was found dead in one of Putin’s prisons on Friday.
He had died, according to officials from the penal colony 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, of ‘sudden death syndrome’.
Navalny was serving a pile of prison sentences for so-called ‘extremism’ and fraud.
Prison authorities say Navalny’s cause of death has yet to be determined – though campaigners say the autopsy result is one not to be trusted.
Navalny would have spent three decades in prison (Picture: AP)
Only after the autopsy is conducted can Navalny’s relatives retrieve his body.
Yulia’s comments come after his spokesperson said his mother and lawyers were not allowed to see his body at a morgue this morning.
Kira Yarmysh said earlier today: ‘Alexei’s mother and his lawyers arrived at the morgue early in the morning. They were not allowed to go in.
‘One of the lawyers was literally pushed out. When the staff was asked if Alexei’s body was there, they did not answer.’
For Yulia, continuing her husband’s work is something she can’t do alone.
‘We need to gather ourselves together in one strong fist and strike at this mad regime,’ she continued.
‘At Putin, at his friends, at the thugs in uniform… and murderers who are ruining our country.’
This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.
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