VLAD THE CRUEL
Alexei Navalny’s body FINALLY released to his grieving mum Lyudmila by Putin 8 days after he was murdered in prison
Details of the funeral are yet to be announced
THE BODY of the late Russian opposition leader has finally been returned to his mother.
Navalny's spokesperson Kira Yarmysh announced the news eight days after the Putin critic is thought to have been murdered.
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Yarmysh said: "Alexei's body was given to his mother. Thank you very much to everyone who demanded this with us."
Details of the funeral are yet to be announced.
Yarmysh added: "We don’t know whether the authorities will interfere with carrying them out the way the family wants and as Alexei deserves."
Earlier on Saturday, Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya had demanded that Russian authorities hand her late husband's body over for burial.
Navalnaya accused the Russian tyrant of mocking Orthodox Christian values, going as far as to liken his actions to "satanism".
She said: “Give us the body of my husband.
“You tortured him alive, and now you keep torturing him dead. You mock the remains of the dead."
The grieving widow added: “No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with the body of Alexei.
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"What will you do with his corpse? How low will you sink to mock the man you murdered?”
Alexei Navalny’s mum FINALLY shown dead son’s body - but Russia insists he ‘died of natural causes’ & Putin wants ‘secret burial’
Navalny's mum Lyudmila, 69, had originally been blocked from seeing her son's remains - with reports he was left battered and bruised.
It was only two days ago, six agonising days after her son's death, that Lyudmila was even shown her son's body.
The grieving mum claimed Russian officials were trying to blackmail her, and threatened to "do something" to the corpse.
The cruel tyrant asked Navalny's mum to choose between two alternatives: agree to a secret funeral in an undisclosed location or have her son's body forever entombed in the Polar Wolf jail.
"They want this to be done secretly, with no farewell. They want to bring me to the edge of a cemetery, to a fresh grave and say: here lies your son. I don't agree to this," she said in a YouTube video.
It was only after internal pressure, from Navalny's family and the Russian Orthodox church, mounted on Putin that the body has been released.
Vladimir Putin's staunchest critic is believed to have been murdered at the Polar Wolf penal colony where he was jailed on trumped-up charges.
According to Navalny's team, Russian officials have denied these allegations - claiming instead that he had died of "natural causes".
On February 17, Navalny's mother and his lawyer were informed he had died of "sudden death syndrome".
It has since emerged that hospital staff in Salekhard found a collection of bruises on Navalny's body when he arrived.
A paramedic added: “As an experienced paramedic, I can say that the injuries described by those who saw them appeared to be from convulsions.
"If a person is convulsing and others try to hold him down but the convulsions are very strong, then bruising appears."
Although, there is also speculation that the bruising on Navalny's chest was actually caused by a classic, brutal KGB tactic.
Russian-born human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin told that the bruising found on Navalny's body was consistent with the "one-punch" technique used by KGB special forces operatives.
He said: "I think that they first destroyed his body by keeping him out in the cold for a long time and slowing the blood circulation down to a minimum.
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"And then it becomes very easy to kill someone, within seconds, if the operative has some experience in this.
"It is an old method of the KGB’s special forces divisions. They trained their operatives to kill a man with one punch in the heart, in the centre of the body. It was a hallmark of the KGB."
Life of Alexei Navalny
PUTIN'S best known opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, has died in prison.
Here is a timeline that took the leader of the opposition from the face of freedom in Russia and the Kremlin's biggest foe to a hellhole Siberian prison and onto an early grave.
June 4, 1976 — Navalny is born in a western part of the Moscow region
1997 — Graduates from Russia’s RUDN university, where he majored in law
2004 — Forms a movement against rampant over-development in Moscow
2008 — Gains notoriety for calling out corruption in state-run corporation
December 2011 — Participates in mass protests sparked by reports of widespread rigging of Russia’s election, and is arrested and jailed for 15 days for “defying a government official"
March 2012 - Further mass protests break out and Navalny accuses key Kremlin cronies of corruption
July 2012 — Russia’s Investigative Committee charges Navalny with embezzlement. He rejects the claims and says they are politically motivated
2013 — Navalny runs for mayor in Moscow
July 2013 — A court in Kirov convicts Navalny of embezzlement in the Kirovles case, sentencing him to five years in prison - he appeals and is allowed to continue campaign
September 2013 — Official results show Navalny finishes second in the mayor’s race
February 2014 — Navalny is placed under house arrest
December 2014 — Navalny and his brother, Oleg, are found guilty of fraud
February 2016 — The European Court of Human Rights rules that Russia violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial
November 2016 — Russia’s Supreme Court overturns Navalny’s sentence
December 2016 — Navalny announces he will run in Russia’s 2018 presidential election
February 2017 — The Kirov court retries Navalny and upholds his five-year suspended sentence from 2013
April 2017 - Survives an assassination attempt he blames on Kremlin
December 2017 — Russia’s Central Electoral Commission bars him from running for president
August, 2020 - Navalny falls into a coma on a flight and his team suspects he was poisoned. German authorities confirm he was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Jan 2021 — After five months in Germany, Navalny is arrested upon his return to Russia
Feb 2021 — A Moscow court orders Navalny to serve 2 ½ years in prison
June 2021 — A Moscow court shuts down Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his extended political network
Feb 2022 — Russia invades Ukraine
March 2022 — Navalny is sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court
2023 — Over 400 Russian doctors sign an open letter to Putin, urging an end to what it calls abuse of Navalny, following reports that he was denied basic medication & suffering from slow poisoning
April, 2023 — Navalny from inside prison says he was facing new extremism and terrorism charges that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life
Aug 2023 - A court in Russia extends Navalny’s prison sentence by 19 years
Dec 2023 - He disappears from his prison as his team fear he could be assassination. He then reappears weeks later in one of Siberia's toughest prisons - the 'Polar Wolf' colony
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