Navalny’s mother must wait 14 days for son’s body due to ‘chemical analysis’ – live

Donald Trump has finally commented on the death of Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny – to draw a self-serving and unlikely comparison with his own legal plight.

Rather than blame Vladimir Putin for the highly suspicious death of Navalny in an Arctic prison camp on Friday, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination wrote on Truth Social: “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.

“It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.

“Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024.”

The former American president is vying for a return to the White House with four criminal indictments and 91 felony charges hanging over his head. My colleague Joe Sommerlad has more in this report:

In a Commons debate on the Putin critic’s death, Alicia Kearns, Tory chair of the foreign affairs committee, said: “Alexei Navalny was murdered and it is important that we in this House call it out for what it was, because that is what he deserves.

“Following his murder, I was also in Munich, where I heard his wife Yulia ask us to stand by her. That is what we must now do.”

Ms Kearns urged the US to follow through on warnings it would act if Mr Navalny were to die, adding: “Biden must now deliver on that threat or we will see more lives taken such as that of Vladimir Kara-Murza.”

Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty replied: “She is right to use the word murder. We do seek to hold the state and the Russian leadership to account.

“Of course I can’t comment on the American position but with regard to our policy with regard to Russian state assets, we will continue to look at the appropriate legal path to ensuring that which is frozen might be utilised to bring benefit to those affected by this outrageous and illegal war in Ukraine.”

Britain should sanction individuals on a list drawn up by Alexei Navalny prior to his death, an analyst has suggested.

While the list initially comprised 35 Russians associated with human rights abuse, bribery and warmongering, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) has since expanded the list to nearly 8,000 people, of which only an estimated 1,162 have been sanctioned by the UK, according to ACF.

Suggesting that the UK should look to Mr Navalny’s list for individuals to sanction, Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine forum at Chatham House, said: “That could be a very nice memorial to Navalny and put a further squeeze on the Russian elite.”

The West needs to make sure that Joe Biden’s “bite is as bad as the bark” in response to the death of Alexei Navalny, the dissident’s biographer has said.

The US president previously told Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, during a stare-down at a Geneva lakeside villa in 2021, that there would be “devastating consequences” should harm come to the jailed opposition leader.

Dr Ben Noble, co-author of Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?, warned that his death was a test of the West’s resolve, saying: “If there are going to be new sanctions, they have to be co-ordinated and implemented.

“I think we should make sure that the bite is as bad as the bark. If Biden says there are going to be devastating consequences were Navalny to die in detention, now he has died, it has to be followed up.

“Otherwise, it is just another case of an empty threat from the West that Putin will regard as a sign the West does not have the resolve to follow through on its promises.”

The wife of Alexei Navalny has accused the Kremlin of conceiving his body as she vowed to reveal the names of her husband’s killers in a defiant new video message, my colleague Lucy Leeson reports.

Alexei Navalny’s mother and lawyers have been told they will not be allowed to see his body for 14 days while it undergoes “chemical analysis”, the late Putin critic’s spokesperson has said.

In a statement echoed by Navalny’s close ally Ivan Zhdanov, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on X/Twitter: “The investigators told the lawyers and Alexei’s mother that they would not give them the body. The body will be under some sort of ‘chemical examination’ for another 14 days.”

Bill Browder, who lobbied for the landmark Magnitsky Act, has called for Western governments to confiscate the $300bn of Russian central bank reserves frozen after the invasion of Ukraine, and call it the Navalny Act.

Open-source investigators at an independent Russian media outlet have uncovered CCTV footage of a convoy they believe likely carried Alexei Navaly’s body from prison to a morgue in the dead of night on Friday.

With authorities still refusing to hand over the Putin critic’s body, causing his widowed wife Yulia Navalnaya to accuse them of waiting for traces of the poison novichok to disappear, the outlet Mediazona found publicly accessible roadside camera footage from close to the prison.

The cameras – placed along the only land route from the prison to the morgue in Salekhard – reportedly show a motorcade of four vehicles, including one suspected prison minibus, travelling noticeably slower than other vehicles on the road, both preceded and trailed by police cars.

To ensure this was not standard procedure for the prison service, the outlet studied footage from previous days at midnight but found no similar convoys travelling at that hour.