Alexei Navalny death latest: Putin critic’s mother to wait 14 days for body amid wife’s Novichok claim

Vladimir Putin has awarded a prison minister responsible for depriving Alexei Navalny of food during his latest incarceration with the military rank of Colonel General.

First deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service Valery Boyarinev was awarded the rank on Monday, just three days after Mr Navalny was killed.

Ivan Zhdanov, director of Mr Navalny’s Anti-Corruption foundation, reposted an image of the order issued by Boyarinev in March 2023 to IK-6 of the Vladimir region to limit the amount with which the Russian opposition figure could buy food in custody.

For a decade and more, he and his team deployed a mix of tenacity and mockery to probe the Mafia-style financial links between those at the top of Russian politics, security and business, writes John Kampfner.

Frozen out of state-controlled mainstream media, Navalny used every digital platform and every social media channel available to shine a light on Putin’s corrupt regime, surviving multiple poisonings and incarceration until he was finally – and inevitably – silenced by his greatest foe.

Foreign secretary Lord Cameron said he expected the UK and G7 allies to impose fresh sanctions on Russians involved in Alexei Navalny’s death.

Speaking to reporters during his visit to the Falkland Islands, Lord Cameron said: “I think the first thing is just to remember what a great man Alexei Navalny was, and what an appalling regime Putin runs in Russia.

“And yes, there will be consequences. What we do in these situations is we look at how someone’s human rights have been damaged and the individual people that caused that, and we’re able to go after those people with particular measures.

“Now we never pre-announce sanctions in advance, I can’t do that.

“But what I can tell you is at the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Munich, I pressed that the United Kingdom will be doing that and I urged other countries to do the same. And I believe very much that both those things will happen.”

France will summon the Russian ambassador to Paris following the death of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reported Le Monde newspaper, citing comments made by French foreign minister Stephane Sejourne during a trip in Argentina.

“I have asked to summon the Russian ambassador today at 1830,” Mr Sejourne said, according to Le Monde.

On Monday, Germany had also summoned Russia’s ambassador in Berlin over the death of Navalny.

Alexei Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov denounced the Russian authorities as “lackeys and liars” as he lashed out at them for the delay in handing over the Putin critic’s body.

“It’s clear what they are doing now – covering up the traces of their crime,” he wrote on Monday.

Since Navalny’s death, nearly 400 people have been detained by police in Russia as they streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repression with flowers and candles to pay tribute to Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.

The US and British ambassadors also mourned Navalny’s death at a memorial in Moscow.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was mulling sanctions against Russia and he also called for an independent international investigation into the causes of Alexei Navalny’s death.

He said responsibility for Navalny’s death lies with “(Russian president Vladimir) Putin himself, but we can go down to the institutional structure of the penitentiary system in Russia,” to impose asset freezes and travel bans

“The reason why it all happened is one man’s hatred and fear – one man hiding in a bunker. I mortally offended him by surviving an attempt at my life he ordered. And then I committed an even more serious offence: I didn’t go into hiding. And that’s driving this thieving little man in his bunker out of his mind.”

So declared the accused from behind his courtroom cage as he prepared to be sentenced to jail. His crime was to have challenged the man in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, with the one tool remaining, the power of speech.

That act of defiance exactly three years ago, was the beginning of the end of the life of Alexei Navalny. The blogger, vlogger, humourist and deeply earnest arch-critic of this most evil of regimes was to see his prison sentence repeatedly extended, his place of captivity made increasingly barren and remote.

The only way Navalny might have escaped death would have been if his nemesis had been toppled from his throne. The reverse has happened.

John Kampfner has more in this longer read: