Alexei Navalny’s body found bruised in Arctic morgue

Moscow: The bruised body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been found in a hospital morgue in the Arctic, two days after he died in prison.

A paramedic told Russian opposition media that there were bruises on Navalny’s head and chest when his body was brought into the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital.

Killed: Imprisoned Russian political leader Alexei Navalny.Credit: AP

“They drove him to the morgue, brought him in, and then stationed two policemen in front of the door,” a paramedic in the Salekhard ambulance service told Novaya Gazeta Europe.

“They might as well have put up a sign saying, ‘Something mysterious is going on here!’”

Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the Polar Wolf penal colony in the Arctic where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said. There are still few details of why he died.

The paramedic said: “I can say that the injuries described by those who saw them appeared to be from convulsions … If a person is convulsing and others try to hold him down but the convulsions are very strong, then bruising appears. They also said he had a bruise on his chest – the kind that comes from indirect cardiac massage.”

Alexei Navalny’s supporters protest outside the Russian consulate in Woolhara, Sydney, on Saturday.Credit: Rhett Wyman / SMH

The bruising of the chest suggests that an effort was made to resuscitate Navalny, “and he probably died of cardiac arrest”, the paramedic said.

“But nobody is saying anything about why he had a cardiac arrest.”

Navalny’s widow appeared to farewell him with a post on social media showing a picture of them together with the words, “I love you”.

Yulia Navalnaya’s post on Instagram, the first since her husband died, showed a picture of the two together, their heads touching as they watched a performance.

Alexei Navalny, with his wife Yulia (right), daughter Daria, and son Zakhar in Moscow in 2019.Credit: AP

It brought a personal note to the loss she expressed more formally on a public stage just hours after her husband’s death was announced by the Russian prison service.

On Friday afternoon, Navalnaya appeared before an audience of leaders, diplomats and other officials at the Munich Security Conference, saying she had weighed coming on stage or immediately leaving to be with the couple’s two children, Daria and Zakhar, deciding her husband would want her to speak.

If the news of his death was true, Navalnaya, 47, said then, “I want [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, his entire entourage, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband.”

Navalny’s last post on Telegram before he died was a Valentine’s message for his wife.

“Babe, you and I have everything like in the song: cities between us, airfield take-off lights, blue blizzards and thousands of kilometres. But I feel that you are there every second, and I love you more and more.”

Navalnaya would be back in a public forum on Monday – the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said she would attend the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.

Navalnaya always supported her husband in his battles with the Russian authorities, attending his many court appearances, standing beside him at rallies and waiting for release from many prison terms.

She was born in Moscow and she attended the prestigious Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. She met Navalny while on holiday in Turkey in 1998 and fell in love.

Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, speaks during the Munich Security Conference.Credit: AP

“I did not get married to a promising lawyer or an opposition leader: I married a young man named Alexei,” Yulia said once.

Outrage over the death of Navalny has been swift and widespread.

Western leaders led by US President Joe Biden paid tribute to Navalny’s courage and accused Putin of being responsible for the death. Britain said there would be consequences for Russia.

“Russia has crossed the line, another one,” said co-ordinator of the Navalny Team in Australia, Galina Seredina.

“Millions of people now feel that this final and last chance for an alternative Russia is lost.”

Seredina said that a reformed and democratic Russia could have been built “if the leaders of the free world were stronger and had political will to cut all connections with Russia”.

“Instead, the world has been only watching how Putin has been slowly killing and torturing Alexei for more than three years.”

Navalny was the only person Putin was afraid of, Seredina said.

Dissident Russians in Australia– some of whom reject the legitimacy of Putin as the leader of the country – held memorials for Navalny over the weekend.

“Now, there’s nobody to stop [Putin] unless the world finally changes the strategy from ‘deeply concerned’ to ‘no deals with the person who is stealing the elections and killing his opponents’.”

The Kremlin said the West’s reaction was unacceptable and “absolutely rabid”. Putin has yet to comment on Navalny’s death.

Reuters with Chris Zappone

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