Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny after his sudden death in a remote penal colony was announced.
Navalny had remained a vocal critic of the Kremlin despite surviving poisoning and imprisonment.
Memorials sprang up across Russia with flowers and candles, leading to mass arrests, including over 200 in St. Petersburg.
The circumstances around Navalny’s death from alleged “sudden cardiac arrest” remained unclear as his body was not immediately returned to his family and video footage from the colony had not been released.
His allies accused authorities of deliberately stalling and covering up details. Navalny’s wife expressed doubt over the official account and held Putin responsible.
Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said, “They’re driving us around in circles and covering their tracks.”
Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s strategist said, “Everything there is covered with cameras in the colony. Every step he took was filmed from all angles all these years. Each employee has a video recorder. In two days, there has been not a single video leaked or published. There is no room for uncertainty here.”
Navalny said he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”
Yulia Navalnaya said, “I want Putin and everyone around Putin, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband.”
The politician’s death came a month before elections expected to return Putin to power and fueled further criticism of Russia’s political repression under his regime.
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