Alexei Navalny death latest: Putin critic’s ‘bruised body seen in morgue’ as family demands it is returned

Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s widow, is meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels later today.

The meeting was announced by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said the gathering of 27 ministers would highlight “support to freedom fighters in Russia and honour the memory of Alexei Navalny”.

Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, rose to prominence campaigning against corruption in Putin’s Russia. He was known for his fiery rhetoric at public protests and in courtrooms, vocal presence on social media, and his team’s elaborate video investigations into state graft.

Ms Navalnaya told a gathering of Western leaders, diplomats and other officials in Munich on Friday that Putin and his allies would bear responsibility “for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband”.

The death of Alexei Navalny is expected to be taken up by MPs later today as the House of Commons returns after recess.

The House will take up issues including the Russian critic’s death and oral questions on the military support for Ukraine and support for the delivery of aid to the Middle East.

The Sunak administration was reportedly weighing up its response to the death of the jailed Russian opposition leader, as Western capitals heaped blame on Vladimir Putin.

Foreign secretary David Cameron has already signalled that there could be fresh sanctions against Russia officials, amid questions for the Russian authorities over how exactly Navalny died.

The row over his death comes as Ukraine and its allies prepare to mark the two-year anniversary of the Russian invasion.

It is not immediately clear what response the British government and other allies may have taken against Mr Putin as Moscow continues to reel under heavy sanctions since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Protesters reached the Russian embassy in Berlin holding banners that read “murderers” in English and Russian in the wake of Alexei Navalny’s death.

The group, which included Russian activist group Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Lusya Shtein, as well as longtime Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol and former Russian state media journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, planned to march with the banner to the city’s Brandenburg Gate but were ultimately stopped by police.

Such actions were meant to show “that we exist”, Ms Tolokonnikova said.

“We show ourselves to each other and support each other, and show with this action that Russia still has a future, and the idea of a ‘beautiful Russia of the future’ hasn’t died,” she said, using a term Navalny has famously coined.

“Right now (some are) saying that hope died together with Navalny. But it seems to me that with (the death of) Navalny it wasn’t the hope that died, but rather responsibility was born.”

Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent rights group reported.

The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin‘s fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.

Some 154 people who held rallies and memorial services after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been detained and ordered to serve from one to 14 days in jail.

More than 200 people were arrested in the Russian city of St Petersburg on Friday and Saturday as people condemned Navalny’s sudden death in jail.

Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church — a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church — who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home.

He was charged with organising a rally and placed in a holding cell in a police precinct, but was later hospitalised with a stroke, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.

Hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repression with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay tribute to the politician. In 39 cities, police detained 366 people by Sunday evening, OVD-Info reported.

Russia has a tradition of admiring strong men. They had one in Navalny. They have just discovered that they have a weakling and a coward in Putin. Every household and every soldier in Russia knows that tonight.

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British prime minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke yesterday about the death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the crisis in Gaza and the Red Sea, a Downing Street spokesperson said.

“The prime minister and president Von der Leyen expressed their outrage at the death of Alexei Navalny, and underscored the utmost importance of holding those responsible within the Russian system to account,” the spokesperson said in a statement.