Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch announced this on Saturday on X (formerly Twitter). Relatives and supporters of the opposition activist had been calling on the Russian leadership for days to hand over the dead man so that he could be given a humane burial. Navalny died on Friday last week in a Siberian prison camp.
Jarmysch said that the funeral should now be prepared. “We don’t know whether the authorities will let it happen the way the family wants and how Alexei deserves it,” said the spokeswoman. Lyudmila Navalnaya had called for a public funeral so that not only the family but also supporters could say goodbye to the Russian opposition leader. “We will provide information on this as it comes in,” Jarmysch said. It had previously been said that Navalny’s mother wanted a burial at the Khovanskoye cemetery, the largest of the Russian capital’s more than 100 resting places.
The widow and daughter demanded that the body be returned
Navalny’s widow Yulia and his daughter Darja had previously appealed in videos to the Kremlin to hand over the opposition leader’s body. “Give us back my husband’s body. We want to hold a funeral service and bury him in the ground in a humane way, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity,” Yulia Navalnaya said in a six-minute YouTube video on Saturday.
She also made serious allegations against Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, whom numerous Western politicians have also blamed for Navalny’s death. Putin was personally responsible for the whereabouts of the body, Navalnaya said. He tortures Navalny in death as he did during his lifetime. “No true Christian could ever do what Putin is doing now 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.
“Give grandma my father’s body,” wrote Navalny’s daughter Darja on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday. Her grandmother Lyudmila Navalnaya said in a video on Thursday that Putin’s authorities wanted to force her to attend a secret funeral and threatened to harm the body. Navalny’s widow accused Putin of continuing to torment Alexei’s mother and wanting to break her.
“No true Christian could do what Putin is doing now”
Although Putin poses 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 hate, it’s satanism, paganism.” But faith is about goodness, about mercy, about redemption. “And no true Christian could ever do what Putin is doing now with dead Alexei.”
At the same time, the 47-year-old condemned Putin’s war against Ukraine, for which he also used the church. The Kremlin chief is leading the campaign against the West by relying on traditional values. “But you just kill, bomb sleeping civilians at night with rockets that were blessed in the church,” Navalnaya said. The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, is a confidant of Putin and an ardent supporter of the war against Ukraine. Clergy repeatedly publicly bless rockets.
According to authorities, Navalny died on February 16 in the penal camp with the unofficial name “Arctic Wolf” in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal. The circumstances of his death are not clear. 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.
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