Alexei Navalny’s wife demands authorities release his body, calls Putin’s faith ‘fake’
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Late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's wife, Ms Yulia Navalnaya, claimed that President Vladimir Putin personally was responsible for the whereabouts of her husband's body.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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LONDON – Ms Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on Feb 24 demanded that the Russian authorities release his body for burial and accused a “demonic” President Vladimir Putin of “torturing” her husband’s corpse.
In a six-minute video posted on YouTube, Ms Navalnaya accused Mr Putin of holding her husband's body “hostage”, and questioned Mr Putin’s often-professed Christian faith.
Mrs Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny’s mother, said on Feb 23 that Russian investigators were refusing to release his body from a morgue in the remote Arctic city of Salekhard until she agreed to lay him to rest without a public funeral
She said an official had told her that she should agree to their demands, as Navalny’s body was already decomposing.
On Feb 24, Navalny aides said the authorities had threatened to bury him in the remote prison colony where he died unless his family agreed to their conditions.
In the video, an emotional Ms Yulia Navalnaya claimed that Mr Putin personally was responsible for the whereabouts of Navalny’s body, and that he was “torturing” Navalny in death as he had in life.
“We already knew that Putin’s faith was fake. But now we see it more clearly than ever before,” she said, dressed in black.
“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with Alexei’s body.”
Since returning to the Russian presidency in 2012, Mr Putin has positioned himself as a defender of traditional, conservative values against what he portrays as corrosive Western liberalism.
He has also trumpeted his closeness to Russia’s Orthodox Church, regularly appearing at services around religious festivals, and speaking of his personal faith.
Ms Navalnaya said her husband had been a devout Christian, who attended church and had fasted for Lent even while in prison.
She said his political activism had been inspired by Christian values.
Concluding her video, she said: “Give us back the body of my husband. We want to hold a funeral service and bury him in a humane way, in the ground, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity.” REUTERS
