American President Joe Biden, on the electoral campaign in California since Tuesday, spoke away from the press with Yulia and Dacha Navalnaïa, the widow and daughter of Alexeï Navalany, who died in murky circumstances on February 16 last .
The latter studies at Stanford University in California.
“He was a man of incredible courage and it is extraordinary to see how his wife and his daughter reproduce this
,” said the 81-year-old Democrat during a very brief intervention in front of the cameras after the meeting.
This took place a few hours before the American government revealed new sanctions against Russia, targeting more than 500 entities linked
to “its supporters and its war machine”
.
These sanctions, which will be specified on Friday, represent
“the largest tranche since the start of Putin's invasion of Ukraine”
on February 24, 2022, a spokesperson for the American Department of Defense told AFP on Thursday. Treasure.
"Blackmail"
The White House released two photos, one of which shows Joe Biden hugging Yulia Navalnaïa, who promised to continue her husband's fights.
The 81-year-old democrat once again accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being “responsible for the death” of his opponent.
Washington at the same time called on the Russians, through a spokesperson, to
“return”
Navalny’s remains to his mother Lyoudmila Navalnaïa, present in Russia.
Also read: Navalny affair: what an autopsy could reveal about his death
“Legally, they should have immediately returned Alexei’s body to me
,” denounced the opponent’s mother in a video broadcast Thursday.
“Instead, they are blackmailing me
. ”
She announced Thursday that she had finally seen her son's body, affirming that investigators have already established the cause of death, listed as
"natural"
, according to the opponent's team.
“They started threatening me. Looking me in the eye, they say that if I refuse a secret funeral, they will do something with his body. The investigator (...) openly told me, 'Time is against you, the corpse is decomposing'
,” she continued.
For Russian political scientist Tatiana Stanovaïa, the authorities want to prevent a funeral from becoming a catalyst for Russians opposed to the Kremlin.
“They will return the body but on condition that the funeral does not become a political event
,” she wrote on her Telegram account.
The team of Alexeï Navalny, who died after three grueling years of imprisonment, accuses the Kremlin of having had him killed and of seeking to conceal all traces on this subject.
"Hysteria"
Like the Americans, Europeans believe that Vladimir Putin and his government are responsible for this death, accusations described by Moscow as
“gross and unfounded”
.
The Russian president has not made public comments on the matter.
The West
“acts as if it were prosecutor, judge and executioner at the same time.
The hysteria over Navalny's death proves it
,” the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, lambasted on Thursday.
“These people have no right to interfere in our internal affairs
,” he added, on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Brazil.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: Dmitri Medvedev evokes the capture of kyiv as a possible objective for Russia
In Washington, the Biden administration assures that the
“major”
sanctions against Russia which will be detailed on Friday are a response to the death of Alexei Navalny, but also to mark the two years that have passed since the invasion of Ukraine.
While the West has been accumulating sanctions targeting Moscow since the start of the war, many experts believe that the world's leading power and its allies no longer have a myriad of options: Russia has put in place various systems of circumvention and obtains weapons from Iran and North Korea.
The US Department of Justice announced indictments against Russian oligarchs on Thursday, while the United Kingdom unveiled measures against more than 50 personalities and companies.
And the countries of the European Union agreed on Wednesday on a 13th package of sanctions.