(Warsaw) Yulia Navalnaïa, who vowed to continue the fight for her husband Alexeï Navalny who died in a Russian prison, accused Vladimir Putin on Saturday of having taken the body hostage to force his mother to accept a secret burial.
“Nine days since Putin killed my husband […] but it turns out that killing was not enough, now he has taken her remains hostage, is humiliating her mother to force her to accept a secret burial,” said the widow of adversary number 1 in a trembling voice. of the Kremlin in an online video.
“It’s Putin […] who gives orders saying: ‘don’t give it back, put pressure on the mother, break her, tell her that her son’s body is decomposing’,” she continues.
Mme Navalnaya also stressed that the Russian president is thus demonstrating that his faith is “fake”.
“What Putin is doing now is hatred. No. Not hatred. It’s a form of Satanism,” she said.
For more than a week, Lioudmila Navalnaïa, the opponent’s mother, has been trying to recover the remains of her son who died on February 16 in a prison in a remote Arctic region where Navalny was imprisoned.
According to her, the authorities set a condition for returning the body to her that the burial be secret. In the opinion of observers, the Kremlin fears that a funeral will become a public event, especially since Russia is organizing a presidential election in mid-March which should see Vladimir Putin triumph once again.
“You tortured him when he was alive, now you torture him after his death,” M said again.me Navalnaya.
PHOTO GABRIEL BOUYS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A poster showing Alexeï Navalny covered in barbed wire during a demonstration in Milan.
The Russian president did not react to the death of his main critic, who was serving a 19-year prison sentence and had survived a poisoning.
The Kremlin has orchestrated, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine two years ago today, a merciless repression of all its detractors.
Mme Navalnaïa also denounced this assault on Saturday.
“You will answer for all that, for (the death of Navalny) […] and the war that you started two years ago, again hiding behind Christian values,” she said, “you kill, you kill people in their sleep at night with missiles blessed by the Church.”
Vladimir Putin constantly poses as a defender of conservative Christian values in the face of a West considered decadent which would have sworn to destroy Russia. And the Russian Orthodox Church, loyal to the Kremlin, indeed has the habit of blessing missiles.
Read Laura-Julie Perreault’s column “The Revenge of the Navalnaïa”