Black vans escorted Alexei Navalny’s coffin to and from the church to its final resting place in the Borisov cemetery. Crowds in the thousands characterize the cityscape in the area and, at least so far, the feared drama with police interventions has not occurred. “Putin – murderer!”, is heard from a group on the street. At 2 p.m., the independent Russian news media reported that the police had made an arrest.
– I have come here from Kaliningrad today because today’s event is both very sad and important to me. Everyone who came here today is fulfilling their civic duty without fear of expressing their grief, even though it is now banned in our country, a protesting woman told AFP.
– For Aleksej was, for everyone who is here and many who did not dare to come, a person who not only sacrificed his life in the fight for something, but also in the fight for us.
Navalny’s camp claims the Kremlin actively opposed a civil memorial ceremony in a hall that could have held more people than the designated church in Moscow’s Marino district, Reuters reports, where only about 300 were able to bid a candlelit devotional farewell. His spokesperson Kira Jarmysh type in X that at first they were not allowed to hire a funeral agency and that hearse drivers were threatened not to drive Navalny’s body.
“Relatives arrived at the mortuary at 10:00 a.m. when Aleksej’s body was to be released. The body has still not been released. The timetable has not yet been moved, but there may be delays,” she wrote earlier on Friday, but at 12.45 local time the news came that the body had been handed over and just over an hour later a group of men carried a coffin into the church.
Image 1 of 3 The Borisov cemetery in Moscow where Alexei Navalny is buried on Friday. Photo: Andrey Borodulin/AFP Image 2 of 3 Alexei Navalny was carried into the church at lunchtime. Photo: Alexander Nemenov/AFP Image 3 of 3 Several people have gathered for opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s funeral in Moscow. Photo: Evgeniy Razumniy/TT
Meduza reports that a large police presence was seen in the area throughout yesterday, partly with increased resources. Metal fences have been erected, surveillance cameras are deployed in all lampposts, connection disruptions are glaring, and reports are circulating that students attending rallies in central Moscow on Friday or Saturday risk expulsion.
– Two people, Vladimir Putin and [borgmästare] Sergei Sobyanin, bears the blame for the fact that we have no place for a civic memorial and a farewell to Aleksey. People in the Kremlin killed him, then they mocked Alexei’s body, then they mocked his mother, and now they mock his memory, writes widow Yulia Navalnaya on X.
– We don’t want anyone to be treated differently, just that people should have a chance to say goodbye to Aleksej in a normal way. Just stay out of the way, please.
Image 1 of 2 Workers prepare a coffin wagon at the cemetery for the funeral. Photo: Olga Maltseva/AFP Image 2 of 2 Mourners gathered in the morning outside the church where Alexei Navalny’s funeral ceremony is held. Photo: Alexander Nemenov/AFP
The appeal concerns, among other things, a concern that grieving relatives, friends and sympathizers would in the worst case be arrested by the police or security forces. There have so far been hundreds of people publicly expressing their grief after Navalny’s death, and on Wednesday the widow voiced those concerns before the European Parliament:
– I am not yet sure if it will be peaceful or if the police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband, and continued. Putin is the leader of an organized criminal gang. You are not dealing with a politician but with a blood-stained gangster.
Several international representatives had announced their presence at the events, including ambassadors for the USA, Germany, France, Denmark and Sweden. “The Foreign Ministry can confirm that Ambassador Karin Olofsdotter plans to attend the funeral in the church,” writes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Foreign Ministry.
Russia’s leadership claims that it has nothing at all to do with the death of 47-year-old Alexei Navalny, but that he died of natural causes after losing consciousness during a walk in the “Polar Wolf” penal colony in Charp, about two hundred miles northeast of Moscow. Navalnaya and others claim instead that he was tortured for three years, subjected to starvation and was basically completely cut off from the outside world.
Yulia Navalnaya. Photo: Philipp von Ditfurth/TT
Initially, the mother Lyudmila Navalnaya was denied for over a week even to have the body handed over to her after the death on February 16, which in itself attracted a lot of criticism.
Whether today’s arrangement is a concession or whether it somehow defied the authorities’ demands is not entirely clear. The crowd at the church chanted “Thank you for your son!” when Navalny’s parents Anatoly and Lyudmila passed with the coffin.
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