“Looking into my eyes, they tell me that if I don't accept a secret burial they will do something to my son's body.”
The mother of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, Liudmila Navalnaya, has openly denounced that the Kremlin “is blackmailing” her family with the burial of the dissident, who died in strange circumstances on February 16 in a remote prison in the Arctic Circle. .
“Time is not on your side, the body is decomposing,” was one of the warnings from a member of the forensic team that Navalni's mother has cited in a new public video, dressed in strict mourning and who claims to have seen this Wednesday the body of his son in the morgue.
“Investigators say they know the cause of death,” Navalnaya added.
“They have all the medical and legal documents ready and I signed the death certificate.
According to the law, they should have given Alexei's body to me immediately, but they have not done so yet," lamented the opponent's mother.
Navalny's spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, has revealed that the medical report establishes that he died "of natural causes", a version that the opposition leader's circle rejects because it points directly to President Vladimir Putin for alleged murder.
Navalnaya does not want to give in to threats in order to offer Russians the opportunity to say goodbye to the dissident with an act that threatens the Kremlin with being the largest demonstration against him in years.
“They are blackmailing me, they are putting conditions on me about where, when and how Alexei should be buried,” declared the mother of Putin's former main political adversary.
“They want it to be done secretly, without saying goodbye.
They want to take me to the outskirts of the cemetery, to a fresh grave and tell me: 'here lies your son.'
“I do not agree,” Navalnaya stressed with a firm tone of voice, before pointing out that not only the family must be present, but also all the Russians who appreciated the opponent.
“I want you, who loved Navalni, for whom his death has been a personal tragedy, to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him.”
The Kremlin is trying to turn the page with Navalni, but many Russians continue to remember the opponent.
Although since his death around 400 people have been arrested throughout Russia for placing flowers at monuments to the victims of political repression, according to the organization OVD-Info, there are still citizens who continue to leave roses in those same places that they have been shielded by the police.
It is also not the first time that President Putin plays tricks with the funeral of a political enemy of his.
The remains of the owner of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died when his plane exploded along with the rest of the company's leadership, were discreetly buried on August 29 in a second-class cemetery on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg.
The one who was known as “Putin's cook” aspired to be buried in one of the majestic cemeteries in the center of the city, but his rebellion against the high command deprived him of the pantheon and of being fired by his thousands of followers, many of They are veterans of the front.
Navalny's entourage has criticized the Russian president for the fact that the Kremlin publicly says that it champions the defense of traditional values and, at the same time, does not even allow a human burial for its political rivals.
“I don't know if this has happened in history, I don't know what kind of evil is in Putin's head, this is beyond any imaginable limit,” Yarmish lamented.
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