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Navalny's family had said Russian authorities were holding his body after he died in a penal colony last week.
The body of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, his spokesman and an aide have said.
“Alexei's body was handed over to his mother. Thank you to everyone who asked us for this,” Navalny spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on X on Saturday.
Details of his funeral arrangements have yet to be determined, Yarmysh said, and it is unclear whether authorities will interfere.
Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, also confirmed the news on his Telegram account and thanked “everyone” who had asked Russian authorities to return the body.
“Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone who wrote and recorded video messages. You all did what you had to do. Thank you. Alexei Navalny's body was handed over to his mother,” Zhdanov wrote.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, had previously demanded the release of his body for burial, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of mocking Orthodox Christian values and “torturing” his corpse.
“You tortured him alive and now you continue to torture him dead. You mock the remains of the dead,” he said in a video message to Putin.
Navalny, 47, widely considered the most prominent opposition voice in Russia, died on February 16 in a maximum-security prison colony in the Arctic while serving a 19-year sentence on “extremism” charges.
Many world leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and US President Joe Biden, denounced Navalny's death and said it was clear that Russia was responsible for his death, with many specifically blaming the Russian president.
However, Russia has denied any responsibility, stating that he had died of natural causes. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the accusations “insolent and absolutely unfounded accusations against the head of the Russian state.”
Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, had said Russian investigators were pressuring her to “secretly” bury her son in a private ceremony without mourners. She is currently still in the Arctic region, Yarmysh said, having traveled there to demand the release of her son's body.
Navalny's aides said authorities had threatened to bury him in the prison colony where he died unless his family agreed to their conditions.
“They want to take me to the other end of the cemetery, to a new grave, and tell me, 'Your son lies here,'” his mother said in a video posted on YouTube on Thursday. “I do not agree with that”.
