Alexei Navalny latest: UK first country to issue sanctions over ‘brutal’ killing of Putin critic in prison

Speaking to reporters on a conference call, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the United States is pressing Russia for “complete transparency” on how Alexei Navalny died last Friday.

“Whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it’s clear that President Putin and his government are responsible for Mr Navalny’s death,” Mr Kirby said.

The US embassy in Moscow has been seeking more information about Navalny’s death, Mr Kirby said, “but it’s difficult to get a point where you can be confident in what the Russians would say about his death”.

The UK is poised to set out its response to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, with foreign secretary Lord Cameron telling Vladimir Putin: “We match our words with actions”.

Lord David Cameron will also condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine and stress the need for nations to adhere to the rules-based international order when he speaks at a meeting of foreign ministers from the G20 nations in Rio on Wednesday.

“We need to adapt international rules and institutions to the challenges we face today. This means reforming the rules-based international order, not shattering it,” said Lord Cameron as he takes aim at what he sees as a litany of hypocrisy from the Kremlin over Ukraine.

“The Kremlin pays lip service to concepts like sovereignty, while openly undermining them. Unlike Russia, we match our words with actions.”

Lord Cameron’s Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov is expected to be among the foreign ministers at the G20 gathering.

The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appealed on Tuesday to president Vladimir Putin to intervene and turn her son’s body over to her so she can bury him with dignity.

Lyudmila Navalnaya, who has been trying to get his body since Saturday, appeared in a video outside the Arctic penal colony where Navalny died on Friday.“For the fifth day, I have been unable to see him. They wouldn’t release his body to me. And they’re not even telling me where he is,” Ms Navalnaya said in the video, with the barbed wire of Penal Colony No 3 in Kharp, about 1,900km northeast of Moscow.

“I’m reaching out to you, Vladimir Putin. The resolution of this matter depends solely on you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body is released immediately, so that I can bury him like a human being,” she said in the video, which was posted to social media by Navalny’s team.

Ms Navalnaya and her son’s lawyers went to law enforcement agencies and the morgue where the body is believed to be held in the Arctic region, but were unable to get them to turn it over or say where it is.

The European Union summoned Russia’s representative to the EU and called for an independent international investigation into the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the EU’s diplomatic service said on Tuesday.

It said Michael Siebert, a senior official in the European External Action Service, also urged Russia to release Navalny’s body to his family without further delay at the meeting with Kirill Loginov, Russia’s acting permanent representative to the EU.

“The EU side conveyed the EU’s outrage over the death of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, for which the ultimate responsibility lies with President (Vladimir) Putin and the Russian authorities,” it said.

Mr Siebert “called upon Russia to allow an independent and transparent international investigation into circumstances” of Navalny’s death, it added.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in Navalny’s death and says Western allegations that Putin was responsible are unacceptable. Russia’s Investigative Committee says it has launched a procedural investigation into the death, and the Kremlin has said it does not bow to EU demands.

Since Alexei Navalny’s death, about 400 people have been detained across in Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, according to OVD-Info, a group which monitors political arrests.

Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression across the country that were being used as sites to leave makeshift tributes to Navalny. Police removed the flowers at night, but more keep appearing.

Peskov said police were acting “in accordance with the law” by detaining people paying tribute to Navalny.

Over 60,000 people have submitted requests to the government asking for Navalny’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said.

Alexei Navalny issued a chilling warning about what a second presidential term for Donald Trump could mean in one of his final letters before he died in an Arctic prison last week.

In one 3 December letter to Evgeny Feldman, a photographer who covered his attempted run for president in 2018 and now lives in exile in Latvia, Navalny wrote that he feared that if anything should happen to president Joe Biden – a distinct possibility, he felt, given the American’s advanced age – “Trump will become president”.

To Navalny, a second Mr Trump term was a “really scary” prospect for the wider world.

Joe Sommerlad has more:

Donald Trump’s reaction to Alexei Navalny’s death suggests he “can’t risk” angering Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to former Republican representative Liz Cheney.

Ms Cheney noted on X on Monday afternoon that “Donald Trump still won’t condemn the [Aleksei] Navalny killing or blame Putin. At the same time, Trump is claiming Putin-style tyrannical immunity in his US Supreme Court briefs”.

She added that it “seems like Trump thinks he needs Putin’s help with something and can’t risk angering him”.

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The White House on Tuesday issued a statement calling for “complete transparency” from Russia on how Alexei Navalny died last Friday.

“Whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it’s clear that President Putin and his government are responsible for Mr Navalny’s death,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

The US embassy in Moscow has been seeking more information about Navalny’s death, Mr Kirby said, “but it’s difficult to get to a point where you can be confident in what the Russians would say about his death”.

The US will issue fresh sanctions on Russia that will cover a range of items, including the country’s defence and industrial bases along with sources of revenue for the economy, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.

The sanctions come in the wake of the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the two-year Ukraine war.