MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has not viewed Yulia Navalnaya's video statement in which she pledged to continue Alexei Navalny's work. The Kremlin stated on Tuesday that her claim about Navalny being poisoned with a nerve agent is baseless. Navalnaya, in the video released three days after her husband's death and less than a month before Russia's upcoming presidential election, vowed to fight for a "free Russia" and urged supporters to oppose Putin more vehemently than ever. The 47-year-old mother-of-two, expressing a mix of anger and grief, signaled her intention to help lead the opposition and accused Putin of orchestrating Navalny's murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects.
She alleged that the delay in handing over Navalny's body to his elderly mother was because authorities were waiting for traces of a Novichok nerve agent to dissipate. Navalny's allies cited a Russian investigator, stating that chemical tests on his body would take at least 14 days, preventing the immediate release of his corpse.
When asked about Navalnaya's accusation against Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment, calling them "unsubstantiated, obnoxious accusations against the head of the Russian state." He refrained from further comment due to Yulia Navalnaya's recent widowhood but asserted that her talk of a nerve agent being used against her husband lacked foundation.
Peskov emphasized that he was not familiar with Navalnaya's specific statement, but if it contained such words, he considered them baseless and unsupported. Navalny, aged 47, collapsed and died suddenly on Friday at the "Polar Wolf" penal colony, where he was serving a three-decade sentence. The West and Navalny's supporters hold Putin responsible for his death, a claim the Kremlin denies, stating that Western accusations are unacceptable. Putin has not publicly commented on Navalny's death, intensifying the existing divide in relations between Moscow and the West caused by the Ukraine war. Regarding police detaining individuals laying flowers at monuments after Navalny's death, Peskov mentioned that the police were acting in strict accordance with the law.
