19 February 2024 , 18:57
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Murdered Russian opposition hero Alexei Navalny’s devastated widow has accused the Kremlin of poisoning him with Novichok and vowed to fight on.
Battling tears of rage and mourning, Yulia Navalnaya blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for her husband’s killing and referred to his earlier poisoning with Soviet-era Novichok.
She tore into the Russian President and his murderous henchmen, saying Putin killed her husband because he was “unbreakable.” She spoke as Navalny’s mother was refused permission to see her son’s body.
Yulia said Putin’s goons were covering up traces of her husband being poisoned again. On Monday she said: "They are cowardly and meanly hiding his body, refusing to give it to his mother and lying miserably while waiting for the trace of another of Putin's Novichok to disappear.”
Yulia Navalnaya said Putin killed her husband Navalny because he was 'unbreakable' (Social media/east2west news)Soon after her furious accusation, Russian investigators said they will keep Navalny’s body for 14 days “until a chemical examination is completed.” Yulia went on to urge Russians to rally behind her "to share not only the grief and endless pain that has enveloped and gripped us, but also my rage.”
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"Rage, anger, hatred for those who dared to kill our future," she said. "I address you with the words of Alexei, in which I really believe: ‘It's not a shame to do little, it's a shame to do nothing. It's a shame to let yourself be intimidated'."
She vowed to continue his fight against the Kremlin. She added: “I will continue the work of Alexei and continue the fight for our country. He was tortured, kept in a prison cell in a concrete box for hundreds of days.
“He was bullied, cut off from the world. He was starved, three years of starvation but he did not doubt what he was fighting for. My husband could not be broken and that is exactly why Putin killed him.”
Navalny’s death must be “investigated fully”, Downing Street said yesterday and Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron says there may be fresh sanctions on Russia. The PM’s office said: “It is very clear the Russian authorities saw him as a threat and that is why they imprisoned him on fabricated charges.”
Tributes to Navalny have been left in protest outside the Russian embassy in London (Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)Navalny had been serving a 19-year sentence at the grim “Polar Wolf” penal colony in the Arctic, 1,200 miles north of Moscow. The authorities said he collapsed, whilst “going for a walk”.
He had been moved to the facility in Kharp, Yamalo-Nenets region, refusing to give up his battle against Putin’s murderous corruption. Russian authorities said lamely that the cause for Navalny's death on Friday at age 47 is still unknown.
He had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from Novichok poisoning, blamed on the Kremlin. He received three prison terms on a number of charges he has rejected as politically motivated.
His widow added: "The main thing that we can do for Alexei and ourselves is to keep fighting. Stronger, more fiercely, and valiantly than we did before.
“We all need to get together in one strong fist and strike that mad regime, Putin, his cronies, bandits in epaulets, thieves, and killers who mutilated our country." Navalny's spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said that the Investigative Committee, the country's top criminal investigation agency, informed his mother Lyudmila that the cause of her son's death remained unknown.
Yulia said the 'main thing that we can do for Alexei and ourselves is to keep fighting' against Putin's regime (Social media/east2west news)Yarmush said: "They lie, buy time for themselves and do not even hide it.” Navalny's ally Ivan Zhdanov denounced the Russian authorities as "lackeys and liars,” adding: "It's clear what they are doing now - covering up the traces of their crime.”
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The anger was echoed by the widow of former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko, murdered by Russian poison in London in 2006. Yesterday Marina Litvinenko, now in London, said: “Putin is a monster. After what happened to my husband in 2006 there were questions. But now we have another victim, Alexei Navalny.”
Referring to the shooting to death of another Putin opponent in Moscow in 2015, she added: “In a few days is the anniversary of Boris Nemtsov being killed and he was a prominent politician. And there are other political prisoners in Russia whose lives are in danger.”
Navalny's death has deprived the Russian opposition less than a month before an election, which is certain to give Putin another six years in power. It is a huge blow to Russians who had seen Navalny as a hope for political change.
Nearly 300 people have been detained by police in Russia as they streamed to memorials and monuments to victims of political repression with flowers and candles to pay tribute. The U.S. and British ambassadors also mourned Navalny's death at a memorial in Moscow.
Authorities cordoned off memorials across the country but they kept appearing. Over 50,000 people have submitted requests to the Russian government asking for Navalny's remains to be handed over to his relatives.
Some Russian media claimed that Navalny's body in a morgue near the penal colony where he died bore bruises, possibly caused by medics' attempts to resuscitate him. After the last verdict that handed him a 19-year term, Navalny said he understood he was "serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime."
It brought back memories of the 2018 attempted Novichok killing of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, known as the Salisbury poisonings. It was a botched hit on Skripal since both survived, after being in hospital in a critical condition, whilst police officer Nick Bailey also lived, despite being made seriously ill.
By then, Russian killers under the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov had fled back to Russia. Later they were named as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, a Major General in the same military intelligence agency.
A third GRU plotter Denis Vyacheslavovich was also in the UK and believed to have played a role. The hit was organised by the secretive Unit 29155 of the GRU and did claim one British victim.
Some weeks later British local Charlie Rowley found a perfume bottle outside Salisbury. He gave it to girlfriend Dawn Sturgess and she died on July 8 from Novichok poisoning.