Police in Russia have detained more than 100 people across the country at memorials and rallies in honor of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who authorities say died in a remote penal colony.
On Saturday, the protest monitoring group OVD-Info said more than 110 people had been arrested, including 64 in St. Petersburg.
The federal penitentiary service said Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk in the “Polar Wolf” Arctic prison colony, where he was serving a 19-year sentence, causing widespread grief and shock among his inmates. supporters around the world. world and the condemnation of world leaders.
As news of his death spread, spontaneous tributes were held in several urban areas and people were detained in 13 cities, according to OVD-Info, which tracks political repression in Russia.
Eleven people were detained in the capital, Moscow, and several more in the cities of Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don and Tver, he added.
The hundreds of flowers and candles placed in Moscow on Friday for Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, were mostly carried overnight in black bags. A few dozen roses and carnations remained in the snow Saturday at the monument to the victims of Soviet repression, which stands in the shadow of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in central Moscow.
Videos and photos shared on Russian social media also showed flowers being removed from monuments to victims of Soviet-era repression across the country.
Protests are illegal in Russia under strict laws against dissent, and authorities have cracked down especially hard on demonstrations in support of Navalny.
Authorities in the capital said Friday they were aware of online calls “to participate in a mass demonstration in central Moscow” and warned people not to attend.
On a bridge next to the Kremlin where opposition leader and former Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on February 27, 2015, flowers were also removed overnight.
There remained a makeshift vase with white and red carnations and a small piece of printed paper. “Boris Nemtsov was shot in the back and killed here,” the note said.
On Saturday, police blocked access to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and detained several people there, as well as in another Siberian city, Surgut, OVD-Info reported.
A video shared on social media from Novosibirsk showed people gluing red flowers into the snow while police blocked access to the monument with duct tape.
Putin's ties with the West
Navalny's death, which comes less than a month before a presidential election that is sure to return Putin to another six years in power, will have little effect on the results, said Alexey Muraviev, a professor of strategic studies at Curtin University. .
“Navalny did not have any significant political weight in Russia. He had an army of followers, but compared to the general proportion of the Russian conservative electorate they were, and remain, a minority,” Muraviev told Al Jazeera.
Instead, Muraviev added, this could harm the Russian president's attempt to reestablish a dialogue with the West by refocusing on his repressive regime.
US President Joe Biden said Navalny “bravely stood up to corruption, violence and all the bad things that Putin's government was doing,” adding that “Putin is responsible for Navalny's death.”
European Council President Charles Michel said the Russian dissident “fought for the values of freedom and democracy” and made the ultimate sacrifice.
“The EU considers the Russian regime solely responsible for this tragic death,” he said.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Saturday that Navalny's “heroic opposition to Putin's repressive and unjust regime inspired the world.”
Wong posted on X: “We hold the Russian government solely responsible for the treatment he received and his death in prison.”
The Kremlin – which has not commented on Navalny's death – has described the reactions of Western leaders as “absolutely unacceptable” and “hysterical.”
China's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Saturday, describing it as “Russia's internal matter,” the AFP news agency reported.
Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recovering in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He was subsequently found guilty three times, claiming each case was politically motivated, and received a 19-year sentence for extremism.
Following the latest verdict, Navalny said he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of the life of this regime.”
Hours after Navalny's death was reported, his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, addressed the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where many leaders had gathered.
“If this is true, I want Putin and everyone around Putin, friends of Putin and his government to know that they will take responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband. And this day will come very soon,” he stated.
Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was traveling accompanied by her lawyer to the penal colony where he died, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Saturday.
