Yarmysh said that Navalny’s 69-year-old mother and his lawyers were not allowed into the morgue in Salekhard on Monday morning. The staff didn’t answer when they asked if the body was there, Yarmysh said.Asked when Navalny’s body could be handed over to his family, Peskov responded that the Kremlin was not involved in those proceedings, adding that the official probe was continuing in line with the law.Navalny’s ally, Ivan Zhdanov, denounced the Russian authorities as “lackeys and liars.” “It’s clear what they are doing now—covering up the traces of their crime,” he wrote Monday.Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Putin another six years in power. It dealt a devastating blow to many Russians, who had seen Navalny as a hope for political change following his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin.Nearly 300 people have been detained by police in Russia as they streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repression with flowers and candles to pay tribute to Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests. The US and British ambassadors also mourned Navalny’s death at a memorial in Moscow.Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials across the country and were removing flowers at night, but they kept appearing.Over 50,000 people have submitted requests to the Russian government asking for Navalny’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said.Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported that Navalny felt sick after a walk Friday and became unconscious at the penal colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived, but he couldn’t be revived, the service said, adding that the cause of death is still “being established.”Some Russian media claimed that Navalny’s body bore bruises, possibly caused by medics’ attempts to resuscitate him. The reports couldn’t be independently confirmed.After the last verdict that handed him a 19-year term, Navalny said he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”In Brussels on Monday, Navalny’s widow met with European Union foreign ministers and other EU officials who were considering sanctions against Moscow over Navalny’s death.”By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul,” Navalnaya said in a video statement. “But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up. I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny.”
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