Russia Says Alexei Navalny Died of 'Sudden Death Syndrome,' Keeping Body from Family

Russian officials are reportedly refusing to release the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny to his family after his sudden death in an Arctic prison camp on February 16.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Sunday it is “obvious that they are lying and doing everything they can to avoid handing over the body.”

Yarmysh said 47-year-old Navalny was “murdered” at the prison, but officials insisted “no crime had been found” during their preliminary investigation of his death.

When Navalny’s mother went to the prison on Saturday, she was told her son died from “sudden death syndrome” and his body had already been sent to Salekhard, the city nearest to the harsh and remote prison camp. Navalny’s mother and his lawyers proceeded to Salekhard, only to be told the morgue was not open for business and had not received Navalny’s body.

According to Yarmysh, a few hours after enduring that runaround, Navalny’s family and lawyers were informed his body was being held by the authorities pending a full investigation into his death, which will supposedly be concluded sometime next week.

Yarmysh said officials were clearly “driving us around in circles and covering their tracks” by refusing to hand over the body.

Navalny’s wife Yulia released a nine-minute video message over the weekend in which she raged against Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for killing her husband and depriving their two children of a father.

“Putin did not only murder the person, Alexei Navalny. He wanted, along with him, to kill our hope, our freedom, our future,” Yulia Navalnaya said in her video.

Yulia met Alexei during a vacation in Turkey in 1998 and married him in 2000, setting aside a career in banking to raise their children. She has been much more private than her husband until now, stepping into the spotlight briefly in January 2021 when she accompanied Alexei on the flight to Moscow that he knew would end with his arrest.

Navalnaya agreed with Yarmysh that Russian officials are hiding her husband’s body to conceal the circumstances of his death.

“They lie pathetically, and wait for the traces of another Putin’s Novichok to disappear there,” she said. Novichok is the chemical weapon allegedly used by Russian agents in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Navalny while he was flying from Siberia to Moscow in August 2020.

“My husband could not be broken, and that’s exactly why Putin killed him, in the most cowardly way. He did not have the courage to look him in the eye or even say his name. And now they are also cowardly, hiding his body, not showing him to his mother, not giving it to her,” she said.

Navalnaya said she would continue her husband’s work to expose the corruption of the Russian elite and break Putin’s dictatorial grip on power.

“I shouldn’t have been in this place, I shouldn’t be recording this video. There should have been another person in my place. But that person was killed by Vladimir Putin,” she said mournfully.

“I want to live in a free Russia, I want to build a free Russia,” she told her husband’s supporters. “I urge you to stand next to me. I ask you to share the rage with me. Rage, anger, hatred towards those who dared to kill our future.”

“Vladimir Putin killed my husband. By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me – half of my heart and half of my soul. But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up. I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny, continue to fight for our country,” she declared.

Navalnaya said the most important way to honor Alexei’s memory was to “keep fighting, more desperate, fiercer than before” against Putin and “his friends, bandits in uniform, thieves and murderers who crippled our country.”

Navalnaya said it was clear enough why Putin wanted her husband dead and soon she and her allies would “find out who, exactly, carried out this crime, and how exactly.”

“We will name the names and show the faces,” she promised.

A few hours after releasing her video message, Navalnaya met with European Union (EU) foreign ministers in Brussels, where EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed “the EU”s deepest condolences” for her loss.

“Vladimir Putin and his regime will be held accountable for the death of Alexei Navalny,” Borrell promised.

During the EU meeting, Germany proposed further sanctions against Russia as punishment for Navalny’s death. Borrell suggested freezing the assets of Russian prison officials in what would become the 13th round of EU sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2021.