Navalny's 'killers' refusing to hand over body, allies say

MOSCOW, Russia — Alexei Navalny's supporters on Saturday accused Russian authorities of being "killers" who were "covering their tracks" by refusing to hand over his body, as the Kremlin stayed silent despite Western accusations and a flood of tributes to the late opposition leader.

The 47-year-old Kremlin critic died in an Arctic prison on Friday after spending more than three years behind bars, prompting outrage and condemnation from Western leaders and his supporters.

His death, which the West has blamed on the Kremlin, deprives Russia's opposition of its figurehead just a month before elections poised to extend President Vladimir Putin's grip on power.

On Saturday, Navalny's mother, Lyudmila, and his lawyer were refused access to his body after arriving at the remote Siberian prison colony where he had been held, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said.

"It's obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks and are therefore not handing over Alexei's body, hiding it even from his mother," Navalny's team said in a post on Telegram.

"They don't want whatever method they used to kill Alexei to come out," Yarmysh said in an online broadcast, in his backers' strongest accusation yet of foul play.

Across the country, Russian police on Saturday moved swiftly to break up small protests in honour of the Kremlin critic, arresting more than 400 people in 36 cities, the OVD-Info rights group said.

"Alexei Navalny's death is the worst thing that could happen to Russia," said one note left among the flowers at a makeshift memorial in Moscow.

After initially pushing back at accusations they were to blame, there was no comment from the Kremlin on his death on Saturday, despite an angry chorus of condemnation from Western leaders.

G7 foreign ministers meeting in Munich held a minute's silence for the leader on Saturday, while US President Joe Biden explicitly blamed Putin.

Putin, 71, has not commented.

In the past, on the rare occasions when he has been asked about his most vocal critic, the Russian leader famously avoided saying Navalny's name.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference hours after news of her husband's death, Yulia Navalnaya said Putin and his entourage would