The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin has not watched Yulia Navalnaya's video (Image: Getty)
Russia has this morning denied using the nerve agent Novichok to murder Alexei Navalny. It comes as Navalny's mother has demanded that Vladimir Putin hands over her son's body.
Yesterday, after Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, accused the Kremlin of hiding her husband's body to allow "traces of yet another of Putin's novichoks to disappear".
"My husband could not be broken," said Nabalnaya in a video released yesterday. "And that's exactly why Putin killed him. Shameful, cowardly, not daring to look into his eyes or simply say his name."
READ MORE: Alexei Navalny's body to undergo 'chemical analysis' as it's held for two weeks
Alexei Navalny at a Russian Opposition Rally in Central Moscow (Image: Getty)
However, the Kremlin has now officially denied the allegation - and said that it "not based on anything," Sky News is reporting.
Furthermore, Moscow said that Vladimir Putin has not watched the video released by Ms Navalnaya.
Now, in a video address from the IK-3 penal colony where Navany died, his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya has called on Putin to release her son's body. Speaking this morning, she said: "I haven't been able to see him for five days. His body hasn't been handed to me, I'm not being told where he is.
"I'm addressing you, Vladimir Putin. The solution to the issue depends only on you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei's body be immediately returned to me so that I can bury him humanely."
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Yulia Navalnaya directly accused Putin of murdering her husband (Image: Getty)
It comes as a UK Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty said it was right to describe Alexei Navalny’s death as murder, amid calls from MPs to bolster the UK’s sanctions regime in response to the incident.
Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Commons: “Alexei Navalny was murdered and it is important that we in this House call it out for what it was, because that is what he deserves.
"Following his murder, I was also in Munich, where I heard his wife Yulia (Navalnaya) ask us to stand by her. That is what we must now do.”
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Leo Docherty, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Europe (Image: Getty)
Docherty replied: “She is right to use the word murder. We do seek to hold the state and the Russian leadership to account.
“Of course I can’t comment on the American position but with regard to our policy with regard to Russian state assets, we will continue to look at the appropriate legal path to ensuring that which is frozen might be utilised to bring benefit to those affected by this outrageous and illegal war in Ukraine.”
Mr Docherty added: “His death must be investigated fully and transparently. The Russian authorities must urgently confirm the location of Mr Navalny’s body to his family and allow them access to it.”
Navalny, 47, was The Kremlin’s most prominent critic. He was imprisoned in January 2021 after he returned to Russia from Germany where he was recuperating from a near-lethal poisoning with a nerve agent.
It remains unclear what response the UK Government and other allies may take against Mr Putin, with Moscow already facing heavy sanctions since the start of the war in Ukraine. In a Cabinet meeting yesterday (Monday, February 19) Rishi Sunak told ministers “Putin is not winning” but that the UK and its allies must “intensify” support for Ukraine as the country keeps up its defensive position against Moscow.
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