President Joe Biden plans to meet with the widow of Alexei Navalny. Yulia Navalnayaand daughter Dasha in California on Thursday afternoon, less than a week after her husband died in a Russian prison, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The meeting was not previously reported and did not appear on Biden’s official White House schedule. Navalny’s daughter is a student at Stanford University.
Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “responsible” for Navalny’s death and planned to announce a major sanctions package on Friday to hold Russia accountable.
After the Russian prison service announced last Friday that Navalny had died in a Russian colony above the Arctic Circle. Navalny free a video address Kremli accuses her husband of killing her and covers it up by not doing it He quickly handed over his body to his family.
“Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” the 47-year-old widow said in a lengthy video posted on YouTube ahead of a meeting with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. Navalny said that the Russian authorities are waiting for traces of “another Putin’s Novichok”. leaving his body – refers to the military nerve agent used to poison him in 2020.
Navalny promised to take over her late husband’s struggle for “free Russia”.
There is Biden expressed his anger against former President Donald Trump Because he could not blame Putin for Navalny’s death.
At a fundraiser in San Francisco on Thursday, Biden referred to the Russian president when talking about climate change. “It’s the latest existential threat, and it’s the climate. We have crazy SOBs, Putin et al. And we always have to worry about nuclear conflict. But the existential threat to humanity is the climate,” he said.
Biden has repeatedly argued that one way the United States can stand up to Putin, especially as Russia continues its military offensive, is to pass Congress. Emergency funding for Ukraine. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday that the death of Navalny, who he said was “assassinated,” and Russia’s seizure of a town in eastern Ukraine over the weekend are all the more reason Congress should pass an aid bill.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnya, said in a video statement on Thursday that she was allowed to see her son’s body at the morgue, but her lawyer could not accompany her. He added that investigators claim to know the cause of his son’s death, but they are “blackmailing” him that if he does not agree to a secret burial, they will “do something with the body.”
Yuliya Talmazan and Aurora Almendral contributed.