Summary
Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
Alexei Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said she has been shown her son’s body. The Russian opposition leader died in prison last Friday aged 47.
Navalnaya has accused Russian investigators of “blackmailing” her over the funeral of her son, claiming they are trying to force her to hold a private burial ceremony without mourners. She made the allegation in a video published on YouTube.
Navalnaya also said that she recorded the video because investigators were “threatening” her. She added: “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,.”
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the west’s reaction to the death of Navalny “hysteria”, and said that western countries had no right to meddle in Russia’s affairs. Lavrov said on Thursday that Moscow is open to dialogue on strategic stability with the United States, but that it must be “honest”, the Russian state news agency, TASS, reported.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said he believed US president Joe Biden had called him a “crazy SOB” in response to a comment he made last week saying he would rather have Biden as president than Donald Trump. Putin agreed in response to a TV reporter’s question that Biden’s remark was “rude”, Reuters reports.
The UK has added 50 new entities to its Russia sanctions list, with the foreign secretary David Cameron saying “our sanctions are starving Putin of the resources he desperately needs to fund his struggling war”. The government claims the targets of the sanctions are people and businesses supplying munitions such as rocket launch systems, missiles and explosives.
The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has announced the UK will send 200 more anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. PA Media reports he added that the UK would train more Ukrainian troops alongside other allies, adding: “Together we will train a further 10,000 in the first half of 2024.”
Biden endorsed the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte to be the next Nato head, a US official told Reuters. The official said: “President Biden strongly endorses PM Rutte’s candidacy to be the next secretary general of Nato.” Rutte would be succeeding the current Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian national.
Updated
Here is the video of Alexei Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, saying that she has been shown the body of her son, who died suddenly in a Russian penal colony last week at 47 years old:
In the video, Navalnaya accuses Russian authorities of blackmailing her over the funeral of her son, which she said they are urging her to hold in secret without mourners.
Updated
