‘They’re doing everything to avoid handing over his body’: Kremlin plays for time after Navalny’s death

In Russia, the battle to eradicate the opposition leader and his legacy will continue long after his death

In Russia, it is not enough to kill an opposition leader. His ageing mother must travel to the Arctic Circle to search a prison colony and a morgue for his body. Russians with the temerity to lay carnations in his memory must be detained.

Even a preliminary cause of death, “sudden death syndrome”, was misleading, as though his death behind bars was not years in the making.