A lawyer who represented the late opposition politician Alexei Navalny and accompanied his mother last week as she appealed to authorities for the return of his body was arrested today in Moscow, Russian news media said.

Vasily Dubkov’s arrest on charges of ‘violating public order’ was first reported by independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe. 

Dubkov was a key player in efforts to get Alexei Navalny‘s corpse back from Russian authorities, after he died on February 16 in the IK-3 penal colony in Siberia after he fell ill when he went on a walk. 

Russian authorities refused to release his body to allow his grieving mother, Lyudmila, to bury him unless she agreed to lay him to rest in a private ceremony. 

Dubkov was pictured accompanying Lyudmila to several meetings with Russia‘s Investigative Committee in the days after the dissident’s death, which many across the world have accused the Kremlin of facilitating. 

Vasily Dubkov (pictured) was a key player in efforts to get Alexei Navalny ‘s corpse back from Russian authorities

Alexei Navalny (pictured, left) died on February 16 in the IK-3 penal colony in Siberia after he fell ill when he went on a walk

Vladimir Putin (pictured) has been accused of orchestrating Navalny’s death 

Lyudmila said she told Russian authorities that they had a duty to return her son’s body as it was already beginning to decompose.

‘Time is not on your side, corpses decompose’, she warned investigators.

Navalny is now expected to be buried in a plot in the Borisov cemetery in the southeast of Moscow, just next to the Moskva River, this week. 

Armed guards were today seen standing outside the cemetery, seemingly in preparation for the expect outpouring of sympathy for the family of the dead dissident.  

Allies said on Monday that Navalny was due to be freed in a prisoner swap, but was killed a day before he was due to be released. 

Maria Pevchikh, a longtime confidant, said in a YouTube video:  ‘Navalny should have been out in the next few days because we got a decision about his exchange. 

‘In early February, Putin was offered to exchange the killer, FSB officer Vadim Krasikov, who’s serving time for a murder in Berlin, for two American citizens and Alexey Navalny.’

A spokesperson for the German government said on Monday that while it was aware of the reports of the reported swap, Germany could not comment on them. 

Pevchikh also claimed former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich acted as an ‘informal negotiator’ who worked with American and European officials. 

Russian Police officers guard the area near the fence of the Borisov cemetery where Alexey Navalny is expected to be buried this week

Guards were seen standing at the gate of the cemetery today 

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, (pictured, left) and lawyer Vasily Dubkov arrive at the regional department of Russia’s Investigative Committee in the town of Salekhard

Russian authorities refused to release his body to allow his grieving mother, Lyudmila, to bury him unless she agreed to lay him to rest in a private ceremony

‘At the same time, [he represented] Putin [as]an unofficial channel of communication with the Kremlin.’

Navalny was imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He received three prison terms since then, on charges he rejected as politically motivated.

Since Navalny’s death, about 400 people have been detained across in Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.

Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression across the country that were being used as sites to leave makeshift tributes to Navalny.

Police removed the flowers at night, but more keep appearing.

Peskov said police were acting ‘in accordance with the law’ by detaining people paying tribute to Navalny.

Over 60,000 people have submitted requests to the government asking for Navalny’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said.

After the last verdict that resulted in a 19-year term, Navalny said he understood he was ‘serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime’.

In a video published last week, his widow Yulia said: ‘By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul.’

‘But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up.’

‘I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny,’ Navalnaya said.

Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its best-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Putin another six years in power. 

Many Russians had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid the Russian president’s unrelenting crackdown on the opposition. 

More to follow.