Death of Alexei Navalny: More than 400 people detained in Russia as nation mourns Putin’s worst enemy

More than 400 people have been detained in Russia as they mourn the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote Arctic penal colony, a human rights group reports. News of Navalny’s death on Friday reverberated around the world, with hundreds of people in some Russian cities paying tribute to President Vladimir Putin’s sworn enemy.

As of Saturday evening, police had detained 401 people in a dozen cities, according to the human rights group OVD-Info, which tracks political arrests and provides legal aid. The organization said more than 200 people were arrested in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city. Among the detainees was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, a religious order independent of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Vojtenko was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home. He was accused of organizing the rally and was held in a police station holding cell but was later hospitalized after suffering a stroke, OVD-Info reported. A St. Petersburg court has ordered 42 people detained on Friday to spend one to six days in jail and fined nine others, court officials said late Saturday. In Moscow, at least six people were sentenced to 15 days in prison, OVD-Info reported. The group said one person was also imprisoned in the southern city of Krasnodar and two others in Bryansk.

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News of Navalny’s death came a month before Russia’s presidential election. Navalny’s mother and lawyers received conflicting information from the various agencies they sought to retrieve the body, his team said on Saturday that the politician had been “murdered” and accused authorities of deliberately delaying the release of the body. “They drove us in circles and covered their tracks,” Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said on Saturday.

“Everything in the colony is covered by cameras. Over the years, his every step has been filmed from every angle. Every employee has a video recorder. For two days, no video has been leaked or released. There is no uncertainty here There is room for sex,” Navalny’s closest ally and strategist Leonid Volkov said on Sunday. According to Yarmish, a note received by Navalny’s mother stated that he died at 2:17 pm on Friday.

When Navalny’s mother arrived at the penal colony on Saturday, prison officials told her that her son had died, Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on the X website “Sudden Death Syndrome”. Russia’s Federal Prison Service reported that Navalny felt uncomfortable. He lost consciousness after a walk on Friday at the penal colony in the town of Khap in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived, but he could not be revived, the department said.

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