London:

The wife of late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said on Thursday that investigators had told her his death in an Arctic prison colony in February was caused by a “combination of diseases” – a finding she rejected as preposterous.

Yulia Navalnaya said she would demand a criminal investigation of her husband’s death, which she considers to be murder, and that Navalny’s team would continue to conduct its own probe.

Navalny, 47, died suddenly on Feb. 16, depriving the Russian opposition of its most charismatic and popular leader. He had been serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on charges he said were rigged in order to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has strongly rejected his supporters’ accusation that Putin had him murdered.

Posting on social media, Yulia Navalnaya published a copy of a three-page official letter she received last week stating there were no criminal circumstances surrounding her husband’s death and therefore no grounds to open an investigation.

The letter was signed by Alexander Varapayev, the same investigative official who, according to Navalnaya, initially refused to hand over her husband’s body to his mother unless she agreed to have him buried in secret – a demand she rejected.

The letter said Navalny had fallen ill suddenly while walking in a prison yard, and was taken to a medical unit where staff tried unsuccessfully to save him with “indirect heart massage and artificial respiration”. An emergency team was sent for, but was also unable to revive him.

Navalnaya said that version was a lie and a cover-up.

“We know very well that when Alexei became ill, he was taken not to the medical unit, but back to the punishment cell. That he was dying there, alone. That he was taken to the medical unit already unconscious. That in the last minutes before his death he complained of acute pain in his stomach. Why is all this not in the resolution of the Investigative Committee?” she wrote.

She did not say how she and her husband’s supporters had established the sequence of events she described.

LIST OF DISEASES

The official letter said the cause of Navalny’s death was a “combination of diseases” which it presented as a long list, ranging from hypertension and pancreatitis to damage to his vertebrae and the presence of herpes virus in his lungs and spleen.

It said the trigger for his death was a critical increase in blood pressure that had upset the rhythm of his heart and overloaded the pressure in its chambers.

Navalnaya said “every third person in Russia” had chronic diseases of the kind listed by the report, and “people don’t die suddenly from something like that in the space of an hour”. She also challenged the diagnosis of heart arrhythmia.

“Tell me, how did you discover this arrhythmia during the autopsy? Heart rhythm disturbances cannot be determined posthumously, and during his lifetime Alexei did not have any heart diseases,” she said.

She said Navalny had been lively and cheerful when he appeared by video link at a court hearing on the eve of his death. And if he had really been suffering from so many diseases, she demanded, then “why was such a sick person sent to a punishment cell and kept there for months?”

Navalnaya demanded the opening of a criminal case, though she said there would be no investigation as long as Putin remained in power.

“Therefore, we will continue to investigate ourselves,” she wrote, urging prison staff and officials to contact her team confidentially and promising to pay for any new information.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moscow:

Russia on Thursday added opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya to its list of “terrorists” and “extremists,” two days after it issued an arrest warrant for the exiled dissident.

Navalnaya has vowed to continue the work of her husband Alexei Navalny, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s main opponent who died in an Arctic prison in unclear circumstances in February.

Her personal details appeared Thursday in an online blacklist maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, a state agency designed to combat the financing of people and organisations Moscow deems “terrorists” or involved in “extremist activity”.

Russian officials frequently apply such labels to opposition figures and those who campaign against the Kremlin or its offensive on Ukraine.

Navalny’s organisations were outlawed in Russia and are labelled “extremist”.

The opposition leader himself was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of “extremism.”

A court in the capital Moscow on Tuesday ordered Navalnaya arrested in absentia, also on charges of “extremism.”

Following her husband’s death, Navalnaya, 47, vowed to take up his work and has lobbied against Putin’s government from abroad.

“If they’re making such a fuss, then Yulia is doing everything right,” Kira Yarmysh, Navalnaya’s press secretary said on social media after she was added to the blacklist.

Navalnaya, an economist, stood by her husband as he galvanised mass protests in Russia, flying him out of the country when he was poisoned before defiantly returning to Moscow with him in 2021, knowing he would be jailed.

Like much of Russia’s opposition, Navalnaya lives in exile and would be detained if she set foot in Russia.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File picture of Yulia Navalnaya, widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
| Photo Credit: AP

A court in Russia ordered the arrest of the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a hearing Tuesday that was conducted in absentia as part of a sweeping Kremlin crackdown on the opposition.

Yulia Navalnaya, who lives abroad, would face arrest if and when she returns to Russia.

Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ruled to arrest Navalnaya on charges of alleged involvement in an extremist group.

Navalny, the fiercest political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he had condemned as politically motivated. Authorities said he became ill after a walk but have otherwise given no details on Navalny’s death.

Navalny was imprisoned after returning to Moscow in January 2021 from Germany, where he had been recuperating from the 2020 nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Ms. Navalnaya has accused Mr. Putin of her husband’s death and vowed to continue his activities. Russian officials have vehemently denied involvement in Navalny’s poisoning and death.

Ms. Navalnaya mocked the court’s order on social media platform X, saying that it’s Mr. Putin who should be be prosecuted. Her spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, described the court’s ruling as a recognition of her “merits.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz noted on X that Ms. Navalnaya is carrying on her husband’s legacy and denounced the Moscow court’s ruling as “an arrest warrant against the desire for freedom and democracy.”

Russian authorities haven’t specified the charges against Navalnaya. They appear to relate to authorities designating Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption as an extremist organization. The 2021 court ruling that outlawed Navalny’s group forced his close associates and team members to leave Russia.

A number of journalists have been jailed on similar charges in recent months in relation to their coverage of Navalny.

The Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and ordinary Russians critical of it has intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.