Mourners Collect for Navalny’s Funeral in Moscow

Lengthy traces of individuals, some holding flowers, had been forming in Moscow on Friday for the funeral companies for Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most outstanding opposition determine, two weeks after his mysterious death in a remote Arctic penal colony.

Hours earlier than the deliberate mourning rites, Mr. Navalny’s household had not acquired his physique from a Moscow morgue, a spokeswoman said. However the physique was ultimately handed over round 12:30 p.m. native time, she mentioned.

Planning for the service was going down below strain from the Russian authorities, who’ve arrested hundreds of mourners at memorial websites since Mr. Navalny died. Police presence was heavy across the church the place funeral companies had been as a result of happen on Friday afternoon.

The companies had been being held on the Church of the Icon of the Mom of God Soothe My Sorrows, a Russian Orthodox church in southern Moscow. Photographs on social media confirmed attendees lining up, but in addition safety cameras that the native information media reported had been lately put in, and indicators forbidding mourners to take photos or video within the church.

Nonetheless, Ivan Zhdanov, who, like lots of Mr. Navalny’s closest associates, is in exile outdoors Russia, inspired folks to return to the church, saying that the police had not been arresting mourners, as many had feared.

“People are coming to say farewell, and no one is touching them,” Mr. Zhdanov mentioned. “Those who want to come to say farewell can do so.”

Previously two weeks, members of Mr. Navalny’s group complained repeatedly in regards to the issue of negotiating with the Russian authorities to have Mr. Navalny’s body released to his family, which took days, and agreeing on a spot to carry the funeral companies.

Members of his group described issue persuading a church, a cemetery and even a hearse to participate within the burial, saying that the authorities needed to stop Mr. Navalny’s funeral from changing into a flashpoint for dissent.

On Thursday, allies of Mr. Navalny, who was 47, described systemic strain on all hearse operators, saying that a number of that had agreed to take Mr. Navalny’s physique from the church to the cemetery had pulled out on the final minute, citing threats. His group and his spouse blamed the Kremlin and Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin. Their assertions couldn’t be independently verified.

“Two people are to blame for the fact that we do not have a place for a civil memorial service and farewell to Alexei — Vladimir Putin and Sergei Sobyanin,” Mr. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, wrote on the social platform X on Wednesday.

“People in the Kremlin killed him, then they mocked Alexei’s body, then they mocked his mother, and now they mock his memory,” she added. “We don’t want any special treatment — just to give people the opportunity to say goodbye to Alexey normally.”

Whereas Mr. Navalny opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the church the place he will probably be buried has proven public help for it. Pictures posted on its VK social media web page on Monday confirmed clergymen in entrance of the church with a Lada automotive purchased for troopers taking part in what Russia calls its “Special Military Operation.”

Two days earlier than, a publish confirmed letters despatched by younger parishioners to troopers for “Defenders of the Fatherland” day, a vacation celebrating veterans.

In accordance with Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, the official medical report concluded that the reason for demise was “natural causes,” which his household, supporters and human rights watchdogs dispute.

The Kremlin has rejected the household’s accusations of its involvement, and Mr. Putin has not commented publicly on Mr. Navalny’s demise. However the Russian chief approved an order selling the deputy director of the nation’s Federal Penitentiary Service, Valery Boyarinev, simply three days after Mr. Navalny’s demise.

And Mr. Putin appeared defiant on Thursday in an annual speech, threatening the West with nuclear escalation and praising Russia’s political system as “one of the foundations of the country’s sovereignty.”

Mr. Navalny’s funeral takes place throughout a interval of intense crackdown, and fewer than three weeks earlier than Mr. Putin seeks one other six-year time period in elections scheduled for mid-March.

A minimum of 400 people have been detained since Mr. Navalny’s demise, in line with the watchdog OVD-Data, together with some for merely laying flowers at improvised memorials to him. A priest who sought to carry a funeral prayer for Mr. Navalny in St. Petersburg was detained whereas leaving his home.

One in every of Russia’s most revered rights activists, Oleg Orlov, whose group Memorial shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was sentenced to 2 and a half years in jail over a bit he wrote condemning the invasion of Ukraine.

The native information media reported on Friday that the police had been analyzing the passports of each attendee at Mr. Navalny’s funeral throughout a safety examine earlier than entry to the church. These stories couldn’t be independently confirmed.

There was a concern that anybody who got here to the funeral could possibly be added to a database and presumably penalized at a later date, a rights lawyer, Evgeny Smirnov, advised the unbiased tv station Rain. Mr. Navalny’s group shared data providing authorized consultations to folks planning to mourn him.