[1]
by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Two women, Kira Yarmysh (lead image, left) and Maria Pevchikh (2nd left), made up the series of lies which in August 2020 claimed that Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok by a Russian state death squad – first in a cup of tea he drank at Tomsk Airport; then in a bottle of mineral water which he drank in his hotel room; and finally in the underpants he dressed himself with before the water, before the tea.
As each of these claims proved untrue on the public evidence [3], they and Navalny agreed to the release of medical data collected by the group of German doctors who treated Navalny after his admission to the Charité Clinic in Berlin on August 22, 2020. But neither data presented in the doctors’ publication in The Lancet of December 22, 2020, nor the doctors’ report itself proved that Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok. That conclusion came in press releases from the German military, and then from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
According [4] to the Berlin doctors, “severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor was subsequently diagnosed. 2 weeks later, the German Government announced that a laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient’s admission to Charité, a finding that was subsequently confirmed by the OPCW.”
That’s a political advertisement, not a medical diagnosis – no doctor has signed his name to either, and no German military officer has signed his name to the first.
One day before The Lancet publication, on December 21, Navalny, Pevchikh and Yarmysh published their fabrication of the underpants story with the fake telephone call of an FSB agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, admitting to Navalny everything which had been disproved until that time. The combination of fabricated evidence of the murder weapon and then of the murderer’s accomplice was repeated in the documentary film which won the Oscar award for documentary films in March 2023 [5].
Yarmysh was Navalny’s press spokesman in August 2020; she still is. Pevchikh was the script writer for Navalny and the channel to him from Anglo-American government agents, as well from Russian financiers in London like Yevgeny Chichvarkin, once the Evroset mobile telephone magnate.
If the two women had been telling the truth and Novichok had been in Navalny’s tea, water, or underpants, he would have been dead within minutes of contact. So too would Pevchikh who hand-carried the water bottle from Tomsk to Novosibirsk, then Omsk, and finally Berlin. Navalny’s blood, urine, skin, and hair, clinically tested and reported by the German doctors treating him at Charité Clinic, proved his collapse had been caused by a combination of drugs he had himself consumed [3].
The two women, and other members of Navalny’s family, including his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, (3rd left) 47, his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya (right), 69, and his daughter Daria, 23, have all refused to disclose any medical data on his prior medical conditions and the medicines he was taking before the August 2020 episode. Navalny himself gave permission to the Charité Clinic doctors in Berlin to publish their test results in The Lancet report, believing they would corroborate his story.
Following Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, there has been no release of the medical data, nor the medicines Navalny was taking at the time of his death; the record of his vaccinations against Covid-19 which were given to him in Germany; his prior medical conditions; or the toxicology and pathology data collected in the post-mortem investigations following his death.
Russian law prohibits the release of this personal information without the permission of the senior next of kin and executor whom Navalny named in his will. He named his mother, Lyudmila. He did not name his wife, Yulia. His reason for doing that has begun to surface in Moscow. It marks infighting over the political succession to Navalny, and the money which the US has been providing to the Navalny organization.
That heirs fight over succession rights, assets and cash is commonplace. What has not yet been noticed in either the Russian or western press reporting is the document on which probate cases start the world over – the will of the deceased.
The first sign that an inheritance fight has begun is that while Lyudmila Navalnaya went to Kharp, where Navalny had been imprisoned, and Salekhard, where his body was taken for post-mortem testing, Yulia Navalnaya flew to California to meet President Joseph Biden. Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake.
The Russian statute on burial, Federal Law (FZ) No. 8 of 1996, requires a signed will by the deceased to confer authority on a survivor to take custody of the body and arrange burial either in Russia or abroad, according to the terms of the will.
That Navalny, a lawyer by training, made such a provision in a will is certain, though the contents have not been released publicly.
[6]Source: https://cis-legislation.com/ [7] See also: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ [8]
More, Navalny designated his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, to take charge because she, it was, who flew to the body to take charge, present the will and other documents required for presentation to the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), in order for them to deal with her. This also means that Navalny did not select his wife, Yulia Navalnaya – or that if he had named her in earlier wills, he had changed his will in favour of his mother before he went into prison isolation. Even there and in secret, Russian law provides that Navalny may have composed a last will which will be accepted in court.
The Russian law regulating wills, and how the FSIN must interpret it in the Navalny case, is the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Articles 1110-1159 [9]. Article 1117, titled “Unworthy Heirs”, creates the legal grounds which Lyudmila Navalnaya and Anatoly Navalny, mother and father, may go to court against their daughter-in-law if by “deliberate illegal actions aimed against the deceased or any of the deceased’s heirs or against the exercise of the deceased’s last intentions expressed in a will assisted or tried to assist in their being called upon to inherit or other persons’ being called upon to inherit or who tried to assist in increasing the share of the estate they or other persons are entitled to, if such circumstances have been proven in court.”
[10]Source: https://new.fips.ru/ [9]
The contents of Navalny’s last will need not have been disclosed to his wife, his children, his associates, or his organization’s lawyers. The secrecy of its contents is absolute in Russian law, according to Article 1123.
In Article 1129 the law also provides that “in a situation that obviously threatens his/her life and who, by the virtue of prevailing extraordinary circumstances, is deprived of an opportunity to create a will under the rules of Articles 1124 – 1128 of the present Code may make his/her last wishes as to the disposition of his/her property in a simple written form. A citizen’s last wishes set out in simple written form shall be deemed his/her will, if the testator has written a document in his/her own hand in the presence of two witnesses the content whereof evidences that it is a will.”
The powers of the executor over assets, money, and other inheritance are considerable under this law; if there had been an earlier inheritance contract between Navalny and Yulia, his wife, Lyudmila’s powers, being more recently attested, would cancel it.
Last week an audio tape, alleged to be Lyudmila Navalnaya making several criticisms of Yulia Navalnaya began to circulate. The tape appears to have been a fabrication out of fragments of Lyudmila’s voice from authentic videotapes she had made days earlier. Whether or not there has been a serious falling-out between Navalny and his wife has been speculated about before in the Russian social media; whether this has now turned into acrimony and legal argument over inheritance, including custody of Navalny’s body and the place and arrangements of his funeral, is unknown.
What is certain is that spokesman Yarmysh has acknowledged that as of Saturday evening last, there was no agreement among the family, heirs and organization, so “the funeral is still pending”.
[11]Source: https://twitter.com/Kira_Yarmysh/ [12]
Omitted from this Yarmysh statement, and also in the mother’s statements, is any repetition of earlier claims from the organization and from the wife that Navalny had been murdered, either by poison, beating, torture, or other methods ordered by the Kremlin. The evidence for these claims has vanished. The wife’s last claim [13], that President Vladimir Putin was “holding the body hostage, mocking his mother”, was a lie.
In fact, what was happening followed precisely the terms and deadlines of the law on burial and in the standard post-mortem practice for cases of death by natural causes and suspicious death, as these terms are used in Anglo-American coronial law. Again, click on FZ 8 [8].
Chapter II, Article 7 sets a limit of time for release of the body from the morgue. “It is guaranteed: 1) the issuance of documents necessary for the burial of the deceased, within 24 hours from the moment of determining the cause of death; in cases where to establish the cause of death, there were grounds for placing the body of the deceased in the morgue, issuing the body of the deceased at the request of a spouse, close relatives, other relatives, legal a representative of the deceased or another person who has assumed the responsibility to carry out the burial of the deceased, may not be delayed for more than two days from the moment the cause of death is established.” When Yulia Navalnaya broadcast her lie, just one day had elapsed since Lyudmila confirmed she had been shown the official death certificate. On the next day, within the statutory time limit of two days, the body was officially released. However, Lyudmila Navalnaya has not made public the death certificate accompanying the body, nor the post-mortem report containing more details.
What details must be included in the report [14] have been confirmed by a paper issued by the US Embassy’s current “Disposition of Remains Report” for Russia.
[15]Source: https://ru.usembassy.gov/ [14]
“In accordance with Russian law, an autopsy is required if criminal circumstances are suspected. Autopsies are performed only by state pathologists…Normally an autopsy must be performed in order to list a specific cause of death on the medical death record. An autopsy may be waived upon request of the next-of-kin if the police do not suspect a criminal cause of death. Russian authorities require a letter from the Embassy either relaying the relatives’ permission for or objection to an autopsy. Objection to an autopsy causes the Russian authorities involved to spend up to three additional days completing the necessary paperwork. The next-of-kin usually must wait two months to receive complete autopsy results [14].”
In other words, the handling of Navalny’s death and his corpse not only followed the federal law, but it was conducted according to the book – the US Embassy’s book.
Everything alleged by Yulia Navalnaya before and following her meeting with Biden is a lie. So was Biden’s brief statement to the press in which he repeated that Putin was “responsible” for Navalny’s death. This claim was not repeated in the official White House “read-out” of the San Francisco hotel meeting [16].
[17]
[18]Top source: https://www.youtube.com/ [19]
Below: source: https://www.youtube.com/ [20]
Speaking for the Ukrainian government and secret services, Kirill Budanov, head of military intelligence service (GUR) in Kiev, announced [21] on February 25: “I may disappoint you, but what we know is that he really died from a blood clot. And this is more or less confirmed. It's not taken from the internet, but unfortunately it's a natural [death]." A Budanov statement of the truth is exceptional; it was intended as a political strike against the White House.
After broadcasting Navalnaya’s claims that Navalny had been murdered on Putin’s orders, the BBC has deleted its report [22].
[23]In its February 22-24 publications, the BBC reported that “Yulia Navalnaya has claimed [URL link] that he was killed on the orders of Mr Putin”. However, the link no longer works -- the state propaganda platform has deleted all prior publications, including the Wayback Machine archive.
Since the Navalnyites, including the mother, have accused state officials of “torturing” Navalny (meaning autopsy), and threatening [24] to let his body “rot” (meaning not embalm the corpse), the US Embassy report and advice to US citizens in Russia explains otherwise: “Embalming: There are no requirements for embalming if the remains will be buried locally. Embalming facilities exist in large cities in the consular district. Preparation and air shipment of remains is carried out in accordance with the laws and facilities available in Russia, and, in most cases, the services fall short of those expected in the United States.”
In other words, embalming cannot be done before completion of the autopsy, toxicology, and other post-mortem investigations have been completed. After that, and after the issuance of the death certificate and release of the body, the decision on embalming is up to Navalny’s mother as his executor. This in turn depends on the funeral arrangements and the cemetery location which she must also decide.
According to her, in a videotape recording she made and the BBC authenticated on February 21, she read out the script of an appeal to Putin. The BBC report said [25]: “The family have been told his body will not be released for two weeks. His mother was informed it was being held for ‘chemical analysis’, a representative for Navalny said. There has been no confirmation of the whereabouts of the body from Russian authorities, while efforts to locate it have been repeatedly shut down.Yulia Navalnaya has alleged her husband’s body was being kept until traces of poisoning by the nerve agent Novichok had disappeared.”
[26]Source: https://www.bbc.com/ [25]
By British coronial court standards, the time required for post-mortem pathology and toxicology, especially when unusual poisons are suspected, can take several months; in the case of Dawn Sturgess, allegedly killed by Novichok in mid-2018, two state post-mortems were carried out, and the final cause of death report delayed for four months. Release of the body to the family for funeral arrangements took 22 days. [27]
By the homicidal poisoning standard which Navalny alive, and his heirs after his death, have set for the western media to repeat, the Russian post-mortem investigation of the cause of death, and the release of the body for funeral, have taken just seven days; this is one-third of the time which the British state organs took in the Sturgess case. The death certificate in her case remains a state secret; details were inadvertently leaked during an inquest hearing after a delay of three years [28].
Lyudmila Navalnaya has now acknowledged that she has “seen” the death certificate on February 21 [29] There are also reports that on the next day, February 22, after spending [30] “almost a day alone with [state] investigators and criminologists”, she signed to receive the death certificate [31]; along with that there were other documents required for her to contact undertaker, church, cemetery, and make flight arrangements if the body is to be flown from Salekhard to another location in Russia for burial. It is not yet clear if she has also been given a copy of the post-mortem papers, including the autopsy findings; blood and urine toxicology; and the scan or other images showing blood pooling (haemorrhage) and vessel damage in the heart, brain, and lungs.
For reasons of her own, Lyudmila Navalnaya is not revealing the evidence of cause of death she knows, and is no longer disputing [32] — not only the official certification of cause of death, but also the scan and other organ images which leave no doubt – except for Yulia Navalnaya and President Biden.
[33]Fatal embolism haemorrhage in heart, lung, brain: left to right: https://www.shutterstock.com [34] and https://www.mayoclinic.org/ [35] and https://my.clevelandclinic.org/ [36]
As for the reporting of bruising, torture, convulsions, and other allegations of cause of death injuries, published by Russian opposition media abroad [37], these have turned out to be evidence of standard resuscitation methods, which were attempted by ambulance medics over thirty minutes, but which failed. For the British standard of evidence on bruising in post-mortem analysis, read this [38].
[39]Salekhard district hospital – Salekhard is a city of almost half a million people.
[40]Salekhard morgue.
[41]IK-3 “Polar Wolf” prison at Kharp, 55 kilometres northwest of Salekhard city.
[42]Salekhard, on the Ob River, is about 2,000 kms northeast of Moscow.
In other words, in a provincial medical centre at the Arctic Circle, Lyudmila Navalnaya has accepted the evidence of the cause of Navalny’s death which Biden, Yulia Navalnaya and the Anglo-American propaganda organs refuse to accept, repeating allegations they know to be false.
In the Russian media, there are allegations in circulation which suggest motives on Yulia Navalnaya’s part which may not be shared by the other women in the Navalny organization. Money is the first of them.
An audiotape, fabricated for 90 seconds from segments of Lyudmila’s voice in authentic recordings, has alleged that the mother has accused the daughter-in-law of failing to visit Navalny in prison for two years; of failing to have conjugal and marital relations with him for three years; of arranging for Navalny’s assets to be transferred to her name; and of causing an inheritance conflict between Navalny’s teenage son Zakhar and older daughter Daria.
Russian media investigations have established that the tape is a fake; that it was launched on several Telegram channels on February 22, and then went viral in the local social media.
[43]This is the main investigation [44] of the tape substantiating it was faked, published on February 23 -- 24 hours after the tape began to circulate.
However, the substance of the particular allegations may be verifiably true. “It is possible that this correspondence, albeit a fake communication, will grow into a real and public one,” an editorial writer has reported in Tsargrad [45]. “Lyudmila Navalnaya’s alleged appeal to her daughter-in-law has been viral on the web. After a couple of hours, it became clear that it was not genuine. Nevertheless, many people believed it. The reason is simple – it lists facts which Navalny’s widow herself has nothing to refute.” The headline of the Tsargrad story is: “The appeal of Navalny’s mother to Yulia Navalnaya is fake. It didn’t become true for only one reason.” Illustrating the text, Tsargrad has published pictures of the family and of Yulia Navalnaya with the London exile and Evroset billionaire, Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Chichvarkin’s role as a financier of the Navalny operations is well-known; so was his visit to Navalny in Germany, when Chichvarkin was accompanied by his partner.
[46]Left to right: Yevgeny Chichvarkin with partner; Yulia and Alexei Navalny. Source: https://www.instagram.com/ [47]
For more on the visit to Germany, read this [48]. For Chichvarkin’s role as a London financier for Navalny, together with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Ashurkov, click [49].
So far, the public relations roles played in the Navalny organization by the four women have obscured the two males in the family – the father, Anatoly Navalny, 77, a retired Soviet Navy officer and small businessman; and son, Zakhar, 16. No statement has been recorded from either of them since Navalny’s death.
[50]Left, father, Anatoly Navalny; right, son, Zakhar Navalny.
Now that Lyudmila Navalnaya appears to have accepted the first or proximate cause of death to have been an embolism striking the heart, this leaves undisclosed by the Navalny family what the second, intervening or contributory cause of death was; this includes biochemical factors, including prescription drugs in lethal combination or the Pfizer mRNA anti-Covid vaccinations Navalny received in Germany, before his return to Russia.
If there is now a fight over the inheritance between the family members and members of the organization, it isn’t likely that those secrets will leak into the Russian press unless the inheritance fight goes to court.
A well-connected Moscow political source speculates that because of his lithium and benzodiazepine drug habit, “Navalny was told in Berlin that [if he continued] he should expect a repeat of his episode and that next time it might be terminal. Then came the Covid vaccination factor. My belief is that he came to Russia knowing he might die, and that the succession was planned. This does not mean Alexei and Yulia knew when he was going to die or have an episode. Obviously if there had been another episode and he survived, there would have been more political mileage and international pressure to release him from prison. But this time it didn’t work.”