Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bid farewell to the Russian opposition leader on Friday Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow following his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.
Crowds who gathered to honor Navalny in front of a church and cemetery in a snowy southeastern suburb of the capital chanted pro and con slogans. Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in ukraine, making the event one of the largest recent demonstrations of dissent. But the police did not act against them.
At least 91 people were detained at events across Russia in memory of Navalny, said OVD-Info, a human rights group that tracks political arrests, and most were detained while trying to lay flowers at monuments dedicated to victims of the crackdown. Soviet. When his death was announced on February 16, police detained hundreds of people trying to leave flowers.
Navalny was buried after a brief Russian Orthodox ceremony, with large crowds waiting outside the church and then flocking to the grave fresh with flowers.
Navalny's widow, Yulia.who was not seen at the funeral but promised to continue his work, thanked him for “26 years of absolute happiness.”
“I don't know how to live without you, but I will try to do it in a way that you guys up there are proud of me and happy for me,” he wrote on Instagram.
Navalny's daughter Daria, 23, also shared a tribute to her father.
“Since I was a child, you taught me to live by certain principles. Live with dignity. You gave your life for me, for mom, for [my brother] Zakhar, for Russia,” he wrote on Instagram. “I promise you that I will live my life the way you taught me, in a way that will make you proud and, most importantly, with a smile on my face.”
The funeral followed a battle with authorities over the release of Navalny's body. His team said several churches in Moscow refused to hold the funeral of the man who crusaded against official corruption and organized mass protests. Many Western leaders blamed the death on the Russian leader, an accusation the Kremlin has rejected.
Navalny's team eventually obtained permission from the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothes My Sorrows, which was surrounded by crowd control barriers.
When his coffin was removed from the hearse and carried into the church, the crowd waiting outside broke into respectful applause and then chanted: “Navalny! Navalni! Some also shouted: “You weren't afraid, neither were we!” and later “No to war!” “Russia without Putin!” and “Russia will be free!”
Among those attending were Western diplomats, including US ambassador Lynne Tracy, along with presidential hopefuls Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova. Both sought to compete against Putin in next month's presidential election and opposed his war against ukraine; neither was allowed on the ballot.
Images from inside the church showed an open coffin with Navalny's body covered in red and white flowers, and his parents, Lyudmila and Anatoly, sitting next to him.
Navalny's closest aides live outside Russia and commented on a livestream of the funeral on his YouTube channel, their voices occasionally breaking with emotion.
“Those people who follow what is happening, of course, to them it is obvious that this man is a hero of our country, who we will not forget,” said Nadezhda Ivanova from Russia's Kaliningrad region, who was outside the church with other supporters. “What they did to him is incredibly difficult to accept and overcome.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those gathered in Moscow and elsewhere not to break the law, saying that any “unauthorized gathering” [mass] meetings” are violations.
After the brief church service, thousands of people marched to the nearby Borisovskoye cemetery, where police were also present.
With the coffin open, Navalny's mother and father caressed and kissed his head. A large crowd gathered at the gates of the cemetery shouting: “Let us in to say goodbye!”
Then they lowered the coffin to the ground. In keeping with his irreverent sense of humor, music from “The Terminator 2” was played, a film that his allies said he considered “the best in the world.”
Mourners ran past his open grave, throwing handfuls of dirt onto the coffin as a large crowd waited at the cemetery entrance. As night fell, workers shoveled dirt into the grave while Lyudmila Navalnaya noticed. Nearby were a pile of flowers, funeral wreaths, candles and a portrait of Navalny.
He had spent eight days trying to get the authorities release your child's body after his death on February 16 at Penal Colony No. 3 in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow.
Even on Friday, the morgue where the body was held delayed its release, according to IvanZhdanov, a close Navalny ally and director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Authorities originally said they could not release the body because they needed to do post-mortem tests. Navalnaya made a video asking Putin to publish it so she could bury his son with dignity.
Russian authorities have not yet announced the cause of death of Navalny, who was 47 years old. Her team cited documents Lyudmila Navalnaya saw that listed “natural causes.” The day before her death he had appeared in court via video link joking with officials.
At least one funeral director said he had been “forbidden” to work with Navalny supporters, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on social media. They also had difficulty finding a hearse.
“Unknown people call people and threaten them not to take Alexei's body anywhere,” Yarmysh said Thursday.
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.
Its Anti-Corruption Foundation and its regional offices were designated as “extremist organizations” by the Russian government that same year.
Yulia Navalnaya accused Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of trying to block a public funeral.
“We don't want any special treatment, just to give people the opportunity to say goodbye to Alexei in a normal way,” he wrote on X.
Moscow authorities on Friday denied permission for a separate memorial event for Navalny and slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, citing COVID-19 restrictions, according to presidential hopeful Duntsova. Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime minister, was shot dead while walking on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin on the night of February 27, 2015.
Yarmysh also urged Navalny's supporters around the world to lay flowers in his honor.
“Everyone who knew Alexei says that he was a cheerful, brave and honest person,” Yarmysh said Thursday. “But the biggest truth is that even if you never met Alexei, you also knew what he was like. You shared his research, you went to rallies with him, you read his publications from prison. “His example showed many people what to do even when things were difficult and scary.”
Dasha Litvinova and Katie Marie Davis are Associated Press reporters.
