Alexei Navalny's mother says Kremlin is "blackmailing" her to make son's funeral a secret

breaking news here uh involving the death of Putin critic Alexi Naval naval's mother says she finally gained access to her son's body but is being blackmailed by the Russian government she says the Russians are trying to force her to secretly bury her son's body now the mother of the prominent Russian opposition leader revealing in a YouTube video that she was secretly taken to the morg to see her son's body after days of pleading to President Putin also breaking today a medical report stating that cause of death was natural all kinds of questions here and reason to be skeptical Patrick reel joining us from keev so let's talk more about this news just involving naval's mom in this medical report hi Carrie yeah as you say just in the last little while Nani's mother posted this YouTube video where she accuses the Kremlin of basically pressuring her to hold a secret funeral she says she was secretly taken to see the body of Alexa novali in the Arctic City where he is currently been kept in a morg um she says though that she's been pressured to hold a entirely secret funeral and actually Nani's team um have just provided a list of what they say are the conditions that authorities are insisting on if his body is to be handed over to his mother they say that the body must be flown secretly to Moscow that the mother must not give any indication that there's going to be a funeral because they don't want people coming to the airport to try and protest as the body arrives they say that the funeral itself must be held entirely private only for family and cannot be public and so obviously this is because the Kremlin fears that Alexi Nani's funeral could become a place for protest and they fear the images potentially of thousands of people coming to that event and for now his mother has said that she will not accept those and that's why she's gone public because she is being threatened and she does not want to accept a secret funeral Kira well and she's also not accepting uh this medical report either that says he died of natural causes I think we need to be very skeptical of that yeah absolutely I think we can have pretty much no trust um about that medical certificate um you know she was shown a certificate by the police in this Arctic City uh which said that the cause of death was natural but of course if as his family and Alexi nal's team have said unequivocally he was murdered um they obviously would not say that in the death certificate so for now of course we have to have a lot of skepticism about that the idea that he has been murdered obviously the suspicions have grown uh only grown because they have been withholding the body for such a long time and we have to say you know when he was poisoned back in 2020 um the doctors in the hospital in Russia where he was treated in Siberia also falsify the diagnosis there claiming that there was no sign of poisoning so of course yeah we have to have extreme skepticism towards this death essentially right now we have absolutely no proof that he was not murdered Kar all right Patrick reel they're in ke Forest thank you hi everyone Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

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Keywords: abc, alexei, arrest, close, conditions, death, evgeny, feldman, friend, jenny, letters, navalny, news, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-107454930, pal, pen, photographer, prison, russia, terrible

Id: aG0cyaPDOwI

Length: 3min 15sec (195 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024