Alexei Navalny news latest: Putin ‘thinks he’s untouchable’ as body still missing

Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent rights group reported.

The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin‘s fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.

A former Russian supermodel-turned-activist has revealed that she’s had to ‘brief’ her children on what nerve agent poisoning looks like in the wake of Alexei Navalny‘s death – and fears something could happen to her.

Ksenia Maximova has been helping Russians to flee Putin‘s regime, and is now based in the UK, scared to return to her home country as she would likely be arrested.

“I have been told I shouldn’t worry about my safety here [the UK], she told Sky‘s Trevor Phillips.

“I definitely can’t travel to some places”, she added, noting that she would be extradited.

Alexei Navalny’s name will become a byword for courage. Vladimir Putin’s just became one for cowardice.

Russia has a tradition of admiring strong men. They had one in Navalny. They have just discovered that they have a weakling and a coward in Putin. Every household and every soldier in Russia knows that tonight.

Putin has indeed struck a killing blow: to himself.

The wife of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Vladamir Kara-Murza has admitted she believes ‘many more’ prisoners are in danger following the death of Alexei Navalny.

Evgenia Kara-Murza appeared on BBC News this morning (18 February), where she explained her suspicions were raised by her seemingly healthy husband collapsing in 2015.

“I’ve been sleeping with my phone since dreading yet another call of that sort”, she said. “I believe that my husband’s life is in danger as are lives of many other political prisoners… These people are kept behind bars, very often with serious medical conditions, with no proper medical treatment.”

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to face an international tribunal on crimes against humanity following the death of Alexei Navalny.

He told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “We’ve been calling for a special tribunal for crimes of aggression and against humanity.

“I’d like to see Putin in front of that special tribunal, held to account for all of his crimes, not just in Ukraine, but as we are seeing just in the last 48 hours in Russia as well.

“And of course as Russia holds elections this year, it’s important that the international community is able to verify that they are free and fair elections.”

Illegal migration minister Michael Tomlinson has said the foreign secretary was correct to “lay the blame” for Alexei Navalny’s death “at the door of Putin”.

He told Sky’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that Lord Cameron has been “very firm and robust in his condemnation and blame frankly of Putin for what happened.

“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine we have sanctioned 1,700 individuals and entities as well, and it’s right that the Foreign Secretary considers the appropriate next steps.”

He went on: “It’s very clear as the Foreign Secretary said to lay the blame at the door of Putin.

“Alexei Navalny was a courageous politician, all of us who stand for politics in the West know how hard and how challenging that is, but imagine how challenging that is to try and stand up to Putin.

“The Foreign Secretary in my view is absolutely correct to lay the blame firmly at Putin’s door.”

Navalny, 47, who was Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, died on Friday at the brutal “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony in Kharp, about 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow, where he was serving a three-decade sentence. Prison authorities who announced his death claim he fell unconscious after a walk.

More than 400 people have been detained at events across 32 Russian cities since the death of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable opponent, according to rights group OVD-Info, as Russians continued to gather and lay flowers.

It has been the largest wave of arrests at political events in Russia since September 2022, when more than 1,300 were arrested at demonstrations against a “partial mobilisation” of reservists for Putin’s military campaign in Ukraine.

Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said.

OVD-Info, which reports on freedom of assembly in Russia, said the largest numbers of arrests occurred in St Petersburg and Moscow, where Navalny’s support had traditionally been strong. As of 2000 GMT on Saturday, more than 200 people were detained in St. Petersburg.

But there was no mention of the events on Russian state news agencies, which are under full Kremlin control. There was also no stories about the hundreds of people across Russia who have continued to defy authorities to lay flowers at impromptu Navalny memorials.

For the mother of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died at age 47 in an Arctic penal colony, the journey to recover her son’s body Saturday was an odyssey with no clear destination.

In the end, she didn’t get what she came for.

A note handed to Navalny’s mother stated that he died at 2:17pm Friday, according to Navalny spokesperson Kira Yarmysh. Prison officials told his mother when she arrived at the penal colony Saturday that her son had perished from “sudden death syndrome,” Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

A prison colony employee said the body was taken to the nearby city of Salekhard as part of a post-mortem investigation, Yarmysh said. When Navalny’s mother and one of the late politician’s lawyers visited the morgue in Salekhard, it was closed, Navalny’s team wrote on its Telegram channel. But the lawyer called the morgue and was told the body was not there, his team said.

Another of Navalny’s lawyers went to Salekhard’s Investigative Committee and was told that the cause of Navalny’s death had not yet been established and that new investigations were being done with the results to be released next week, Yarmysh said. Russia’s Investigative Committee informed Navalny’s team that the body would not be handed over to his relatives until those investigations were complete, she said.