The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was on Monday denied access to a morgue where his body was believed to be kept after his death in an Arctic penal colony, as Mr Navalny’s allies accused authorities of trying to hide evidence.

Mr Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said that the Investigative Committee, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, informed Lyudmila Navalnaya that the cause of her son’s death remained unknown and that the official probe had been extended.

“They lie, buy time for themselves and do not even hide it,” Ms Yarmysh posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Many world leaders blamed Russian president Vladimir Putin and his government for Mr Navalny’s death on Friday at age 47.

The Kremlin has fiercely rejected the accusations. Mr Navalny’s team said he was “murdered” and charged that officials’ refusal to hand over his body was part of a cover-up.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov slammed what he described as “boorish” and “inadmissible” statements by Western leaders who held Mr Putin responsible for Mr Navalny’s death.

“Those statements can’t do any harm to the head of our state, but they certainly aren’t becoming for those who make them,” Mr Peskov said in a call with reporters.

Ms Yarmysh said that Mr Navalny’s mother and his lawyers were not allowed into the morgue in Salekhard on Monday morning. The staff did not answer when they asked if the body was there, Ms Yarmysh said.

Mr Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov denounced the authorities as “lackeys and liars”.

“It’s clear what they are doing now — covering up the traces of their crime,” he wrote on Monday.

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

It dealt a devastating blow to many Russians, who had seen Mr Navalny as a hope for political change following his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin.

Nearly 300 people have been detained by police in Russia as they streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repression with flowers and candles to pay tribute to Mr Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.

The US and British ambassadors also mourned Mr Navalny’s death at a memorial in Moscow.

Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials across the country and were removing flowers at night, but they kept appearing.

More than 50,000 people have submitted requests to the Russian government asking for Mr Navalny’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported that Mr Navalny felt sick after a walk on Friday and became unconscious at the penal colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) north-east of Moscow.

An ambulance arrived, but he could not be revived, the service said, adding that the cause of death is still “being established.”

Mr Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He received three prison terms since his arrest, on a number of charges he has rejected as politically motivated.

After the last verdict that handed him a 19-year term, Mr 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”.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, was in Brussels on Monday and is expected to meet European Union foreign ministers and other EU officials.

On Sunday, she published a picture of the couple on Instagram in her first social media post since her husband’s death, with the caption “I love you”.