The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's mother Lyudmila Navalnaya said on Thursday, February 22 that she had been taken to see his body by investigators, after days of being barred from the morgue. "Yesterday evening they secretly took me to the morgue where they showed me Alexei," she said in a video released on social media from Salekhard, the nearest town to the Arctic prison where he died last week.
In the video, she also says officials are pressuring her into a "secret" burial for her son. "They are blackmailing me, they put conditions for where, when and how Alexei should be buried. This is illegal," Lyudmila Navalnaya said in a video published by his team. "They want it to be done in secret."
Exiled Belarussian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Thursday urged democratic governments to make Alexei Navalny's death a "red line" with actions and not just "words of support". "Navalny's death might become a green light or a red line for further murders," Tikhanovskaya told reporters in Vienna ahead of speaking at a meeting by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
"If the powerful democratic world limits (itself to) only words of support, empathy, it will give more opportunities for dictators to kill their opponents without any consequences," she added. Instead, governments should send a "strong signal" in terms of "sanctions or accountability mechanisms" to ensure that "those who kill their opponents, will be brought to justice". Navalny's "murder personally affects me greatly, because my husband is in the same situation", she added.
Tikhanovskaya's husband Sergei Tikhanovsky is among a number of top opposition leaders still in jail. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2021 convicted of "organizing riots and inciting social hatred". Earlier this week, a Belarusian political activist Igor Lednik jailed for "defamation" against Lukashenko died in prison, his political party said.