Yulia Navalnaya accuses the Russian president of mocking Christianity as officials refuse to hand over the remains to her family.
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, demanded that Russian authorities hand over his body for burial as she accused President Vladimir Putin of mocking Orthodox Christian values and “torturing” his corpse.
“Give us my husband's body,” Navalnaya said in a video released Saturday, adding that she wanted to offer him a traditional Orthodox funeral.
“You tortured him alive and now you continue to torture him dead. You mock the remains of the dead,” he said in a message to Putin.
Navalny, a prominent opponent of Putin, died last week in a remote maximum-security penal colony in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges.
Authorities say he died of natural causes. They have refused to hand over his remains to the family even nine days later.
Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has said investigators were pressuring her to bury her son “secretly” in a private ceremony without mourners.
An official told him he should accept their demands because Navalny's body was already decomposing, he said.
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”.
'How low will you fall?'
“No true Christian could do what Putin is doing now with Alexey's body,” his widow said in the video, while questioning Putin's often professed Christian faith.
“What will you do with his corpse? To what extent will you go to mock the man you murdered? “He asked and said: “We already knew that Putin's faith was false. But now we see it more clearly than ever.”
The Russian leader is frequently depicted in church, immersing himself in icy water to celebrate Epiphany, and visiting holy sites in Russia. He has promoted what he has called “traditional values” without which, he once said, “society degrades,” and has touted his closeness to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denounced accusations – including from world leaders – that Putin was involved in Navalny's death, calling them “insolent and absolutely unfounded accusations against the Russian head of state.”
Musician Nadya Tolokonnikova, who became widely known after spending almost two years in prison for participating in a 2012 protest with her band Pussy Riot inside Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, posted a video in which she accused Putin of hypocrisy.
“We were imprisoned for allegedly trampling on traditional values. But no one tramples traditional Russian values more than you, Putin, his officials and his priests who pray for all the murders they commit, year after year, day after day,” said Tolokonnikova, who lives abroad. “Putin, be conscientious, give his mother the body of her son.”
Tolokonnikova was one of several cultural icons who posted videos calling on Russian authorities to return Navalny's body to his family.
Critics say authorities fear the funeral could become a large-scale public display of support for the opposition leader.
Funeral preparations for Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally turned rival and founder of the Wagner mercenary group who died last August, were shrouded in secrecy and his body was buried on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, away from the media's gaze. .
While the Russian media has given little space to the news of Navalny's death, people flocked to the streets in cities across the country to pay tribute to the opposition leader. Police arrested at least 400 people in the first 24 hours of news of his death, according to the protest monitoring group OVD-Info.
