The United States will announce fresh sanctions on Russia on Friday over the death in prison of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as a string of European governments summoned Russian diplomats.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main political opponent died in his penal colony on Friday, Russian authorities said. His team says the 47-year-old was murdered.
The US is set to announce a “major sanctions package to hold Russia accountable” and respond to the “vicious and brutal war that has now raged on for two years”, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.
The US and its allies imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The European Union summoned Russia’s charge d’affaires over Navalny’s death, as Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Poland called in Russian ambassadors.
Meanwhile, Italy’s deputy prime minister and former Putin admirer Matteo Salvini was criticised for saying it was “up to Russian doctors and judges” to determine the cause of Navalny’s death.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, urged Putin to “immediately” release the body of her son — a demand echoed by his widow Yulia Navalnaya.
Lyudmila Navalnaya travelled to the remote IK-3 penal colony on Saturday, the morning after his death was announced, and has since been barred from seeing his body.
“Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him in a humane way,” she said, dressed all in black, in a video published by his team.
Investigators said his body could be kept for “at least two weeks”, Navalny’s allies reported.
Navalny’s team also published a written letter to Putin by Lyudmila Navalnaya — who is not a public figure — making the demand.
The Kremlin has refused to say when the body will be handed over and Putin has been silent on the death of his main political opponent, who has spent years uncovering and publicising government corruption.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday brushed off Yulia Navalnaya’s statement that Putin killed her husband as “unfounded and vulgar”.
“I do not give a damn how the press secretary of a murderer comments on my words,” Navalnaya shot back on social media.
