Russian troops killed a Ukrainian civilian after discovering he shared a surname with opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Kremlin critic alleged Tuesday.
The body of Ilya Navalny was found in Bucha among 400 others who were killed amid Russia’s invasion. Ilya Navalny was identified after his passport was found near his remains, prompting Alexei Navalny to accuse Russian troops of killing the civilian because they assumed the two were related.
“Everything indicates that they killed him because of his last name,” Alexei Navalny said in a tweet. “That’s why his passport was defiantly thrown nearby. A completely innocent person was killed by Putin’s executioners (what else can I call them? definitely not ‘Russian soldiers’) because he is my namesake.”
1/9 A passport with the surname “Navalny” lies next to the dead body on the ground. This is one of the people killed in the Ukrainian village of Bucha. Ilya Ivanovich Navalny. pic.twitter.com/vxfdkrTmLv
— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) April 19, 2022
UKRAINIAN MILITARY TELLS MILITARY TO BOMB HIS RUSSIAN-OCCUPIED MANSION
The dissident, currently serving a 2 1/2-year sentence and facing another sentence of up to 13 years on charges of fraud and contempt of court that he says are politically motivated, has remained a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin since his imprisonment, previously calling on Russians to protest the “obviously insane tsar” and his invasion of Ukraine.
“This war was also unleashed by a raving maniac obsessed with some nonsense about geopolitics, history and the structure of the world,” he said in a tweet Tuesday. “This maniac will not stop himself. He, like a drug addict, got hooked on death, war and lies — he needs them to maintain his power.”
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More than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the invasion began, with another 2,818 injured, according to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Most of these casualties were caused by explosive weapons, such as rocket launch systems and missile strikes, the agency said.
The Western world looked to Bucha, a suburb northwest of the capital city of Kyiv, with shock and dismay last month after hundreds of bodies were found in a mass grave following Russian forces’ occupation of the town.
