Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia, daughter Dasha meet Joe Biden in US

The private, emotional meeting took place in California, as the White House prepares to announce fresh sanctions against Russia over the death of Alexei Navalny.

US President Joe Biden has held a private, emotional meeting with the widow and daughter of Alexei Navalny in California, as his administration prepared to announce fresh sanctions against Russia over the death of the Kremlin opposition leader.

The visit at hotel in San Francisco came as the White House backed Mr Navalny’s mother in her fight to retrieve her son’s body, which Russian authorities have refused to release days after he died in an Arctic prison.

Mr Navalny’s team says the 47-year-old, President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, was murdered.

Mr Biden could be seen hugging Yulia Navalnaya, Mr Navalny’s widow, and leaning forward as he spoke with her and daughter Dasha, a student at Stanford University, in images released by the White House.

The president’s own history of loss -- his first wife and his infant daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972, while his son Beau died of cancer in 2015 -- has seen him often referred to as America’s Consoler-in-Chief.

After the meeting, he said the two women were emulating Mr Navalny’s “incredible courage.” Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue her late husband’s opposition to Putin, is “not giving up,” he said.

He also took direct aim at the Russian leader, reaffirming that his administration will unveil sanctions Friday “against Putin, who is responsible for his death.”

The US and its allies have imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Joe Biden (C) meets with Yulia Navalnaya (R), and daughter Dasha Navalnaya (L) in San Francisco. Picture: White House/AFP.

Earlier, Mr Navalny’s mother said officials from the Kremlin were pressuring her into a “secret” burial for her son.

Lyudmila Navalnaya said she had been shown his body in the morgue in Salekhard, the nearest town to the remote prison, after several days of being barred from seeing her son.

“Yesterday evening they secretly took me to the morgue where they showed me Alexei,” she said in a video released on social media by Navalny’s team.

But she said investigators wanted her son, who was 47, to be buried “secretly, without a chance to say goodbye.”

“They are blackmailing me, they put conditions for where, when and how Alexei should be buried. This is illegal,” she said.

Navalny galvanised mass protests against Putin, winning popularity with a series of investigations into state corruption.

He was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent in 2020 and was then jailed in 2021 after returning to Russia following a period of treatment in Germany.

He was sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges and sent to IK-3, a harsh penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle known as “Polar Wolf”.

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of Alexei Navalny, said she had been threatened by Russian authorities. Picture: Supplied

– Investigators ‘threatening’ –

Lyudmila Navalnaya travelled to Russia’s Far North the morning after Navalny’s death was announced, hoping to be able to see and retrieve her son’s body but was forced to wait nearly a week before being allowed to view him.

She said she recorded the video because investigators were “threatening” her. “Looking me in the eye, they said that if I do not agree to a secret funeral they’ll do something with my son’s body.

“Investigator Voropaev openly told me, ‘Time is not on your side, the corpse is decomposing.’ I don’t want special conditions, I just want everything to be done according to the law. I demand that my son’s body be returned to me immediately.”

Ms Navalnaya also said that investigators had told her they knew the cause of death but did not say what it was.

“They want to take me to the edge of a cemetery to a fresh grave and say: Here is where your son lies. I am against that.

“I want that for those of you for whom Alexei is dear, for everyone for whom his death became a personal tragedy, to have the possibility to say goodbye to him.”

Western governments and Russian opposition figures have accused the Kremlin of being responsible for Navalny’s death on February 16.

Hundreds of people have been detained in Russia in recent days at events to pay tribute to Navalny and his widow Yulia Navalnaya has vowed to continue his work.

The Kremlin has refused to say when the body will be handed over and has branded Western accusations as “hysterical”.

Putin has so far remained silent on the death of his main political opponent. Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said that a medical report on the death shown to Lyudmila Navalnaya “stated that the cause of death was natural”.

AFP