More than 400 people were detained while paying tribute in Russia opposition leader Alexei Navalnydied in a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent human rights organization said.
The Navalny’s sudden death, 47, came as a crushing blow to many Russians who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin’s arch-enemy. Navalny remained in his voice Cruel criticism of the Kremlin even after being poisoned with a nerve agent and serving multiple prison terms.
The news reverberated around the world, and hundreds of people flocked to dozens of Russian cities ad-hoc memories On Fridays and Saturdays, flowers and candles are placed on the monuments erected in memory of the victims of political repression. Police in more than a dozen cities detained 401 people Saturday night, according to the OVD-Info legal group, which monitors political arrests and provides legal aid.
According to the organization, more than 200 people were arrested in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city. Among those detained is Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church. He announced on social networks that he planned to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested in front of his house on Saturday morning. . OVD-Info informs that he was accused of organizing the rally and was put in a holding cell at the police station, but later he was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of stroke.
The courts of St. Petersburg sentenced 42 of those detained on Friday to one to six days in prison, and nine others were fined. OVD-Info informs that at least six people were sentenced to 15 days in prison in Moscow. The group also said that one person was arrested in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk.
News of Navalny’s death came a month before Russia’s widely anticipated presidential election President Vladimir Putin six more years in power. Questions about the cause of death lingered Sunday, and it was unclear when authorities would release the body to the family.
This was reported by Navalny’s team on Saturday politician “killed” and Navalny’s mother and lawyers accused the authorities of deliberately withholding the release of the body by receiving conflicting information from the various agencies they went to to retrieve the body. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmish said on Saturday: “They are driving us in circles and hiding their tracks.”
“Everything in the colony is surrounded by cameras. Every step he takes has been filmed from all angles over the years. Each employee has a video recorder. Not a single video was leaked or published in two days. There is no room for uncertainty,” Navalny’s closest ally and strategist Leonid Volkov said on Sunday.
According to Yarmish, the note given to Navalny’s mother said that he died on Friday at 14:17. Prison officials told the mother that her son had died when she arrived at the penitentiary on Saturday. “sudden death syndrome” Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said Navalny felt unwell after a walk on Friday and passed out in a penitentiary in Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow. An ambulance attended but could not revive him, with the service saying the cause of death was still “undetermined”.
Navalny has been in prison since January 2021, after returning to Moscow after recovering from nerve agent poisoning in Germany. Received three terms of imprisonment since his arrestHe denied a number of accusations as politically motivated.
After the final sentence, which gave him 19 years in prison, Navalny said that he “understands that he is serving a life sentence, it is measured by the length of my life or the life of this regime.”
A few hours after the news of Navalny’s death, his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, made a dramatic speech. Munich Security Conference.
He said that he is not sure whether to believe the news from official Russian sources: “But if this is true, I want Putin and everyone around Putin, Putin’s friends, the government to know that they will be responsible for what they have done to our country. , my family and my husband”.