US President Joe Biden on Thursday had a private, emotional meeting with the widow and daughter of Alexei Navalny in California, as his administration announced fresh sanctions against Russia over the death of the Kremlin opposition leader.
The visit at a hotel in San Francisco came as the White House backed 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.
Navalny’s team says the 47-year-old, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, was murdered.
Photo: White House via Reuters
Biden could be seen hugging Yulia Navalnaya, 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 US 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 the US’ consoler-in-chief.
After the meeting, he said the two women were emulating Navalny’s “incredible courage.”
Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue her late husband’s opposition to Putin, is “not giving up,” he said.
The Biden administration on Thursday announced that it would sanction more than 500 targets in Russia’s “war machine” to mark the second anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine and in response to Navalny’s death, for which Biden said Putin was “responsible.”
The US and its allies have imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Navalny, who died on Friday last week, galvanized 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, 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.”
Western governments and Russian opposition figures have accused the Kremlin of being responsible for his death, with an outraged Biden previously blaming Putin and his “thugs.”
Hundreds of people have been detained in Russia at events to pay tribute to Navalny.
His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, traveled to Russia’s north the morning after her son’s death was announced, hoping to retrieve his body. For days officials refused her access, prompting her to make a video appeal directly to Putin himself.
She said on Thursday that she had been shown Navalny’s body in a morgue in Salekhard, the nearest town to the remote prison, but, in a video released on social media by Navalny’s team, she said investigators wanted her son 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. “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.”
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... I ask for my son’s body to be given to me immediately,” she said.
Navalny’s mother also said that investigators told her they knew the cause of death, but did not say what it was.
The Kremlin has refused to say when the body would be handed over and has branded Western accusations as “hysterical.”
“The Russians need to give her back her son,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Thursday.
Putin has remained silent on the death of his political opponent.
Navalny’s spokesman, Kira Yarmysh, said a medical report on the death shown to Lyudmila Navalnaya “stated that the cause of death was natural.”
China’s military yesterday showed off its machine-gun equipped robot battle “dogs” at the start of its biggest ever drills with Cambodian forces. More than 2,000 troops, including 760 Chinese military personnel, are taking part in the drills at a remote training center in central Kampong Chhnang Province and at sea off Preah Sihanouk Province. The 15-day exercise, dubbed Golden Dragon, also involves 14 warships — three from China — two helicopters and 69 armored vehicles and tanks, and includes live-fire, anti-terrorism and humanitarian rescue drills. The hardware on show included the so-called “robodogs” — remote-controlled four-legged robots with automatic rifles mounted on their
A Philippine boat convoy bearing supplies for Filipino fishers yesterday said that it was headed back to port, ditching plans to sail to a reef off the Southeast Asian country after one of their boats was “constantly shadowed” by a Chinese vessel. The Atin Ito (“This Is Ours”) coalition convoy on Wednesday set sail to distribute fuel and food to fishers and assert Philippine rights in the disputed South China Sea. “They will now proceed to the Subic fish port to mark the end of their successful mission,” the group said in a statement. A Philippine Coast Guard vessel escorting the convoy was
STREET WATCH: Residents watched over barricades blocking roads and flew white flags to show that they intended to keep an eye on their neighborhoods France yesterday deployed troops to New Caledonia’s ports and international airport, banned TikTok and imposed a state of emergency after three nights of clashes that have left four dead and hundreds wounded. Pro-independence, largely indigenous protests against a French plan to impose new voting rules on its Pacific archipelago have spiraled into the deadliest violence since the 1980s, with a police officer among several killed by gunfire. On roads, the torched detritus amassed over four days of unrest was scattered amid fist-size hunks of rock and cement that appeared to have been flung during riots. Armored vehicles roved the city’s palm-lined boulevards, usually
SHAKE-UP: Lam, who would be the third president in less than two years, emerged as one of the country’s most important officials after leading an anti-corruption effort Vietnam has nominated the enforcer of the Communist Party’s anti-corruption drive as the next president and proposed a new head of the National Assembly, in appointments that could ease months of political turmoil and allow policymakers to refocus on a struggling economy. Unprecedentedly for a one-party nation once known for its stable politics, two state presidents and a National Assembly speaker have stepped down in less than 18 months, all for unspecified “wrongdoing” amid a major anti-graft campaign which is unnerving foreign investors because of its chilling effect on bureaucracy. After approval from the National Assembly, which could come this week, Vietnamese