Many people offered their final farewells to Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow. Alexei Navalny died two weeks ago in a prison, and the cause of his death is still unknown. The funeral had a lot of police there to keep things safe.
The service happened after a struggle with officials to release the body of President Vladimir Putin’s strongest critic. His friends said that many churches in Moscow didn’t want to do the funeral for the man who fought against corruption and organized big protests. Western leaders said the Russian leader was responsible for the death, but the Kremlin denied this angrily.
Navalny’s team finally got approval from the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, which was surrounded by barriers on Friday.
As the box with his body was brought out of the car and carried into the church, the people outside clapped and said his name. Some also yelled, “You were brave and so are we. ” and later “We don’t want war. ”
American and other Western diplomats Ambassador Lynn Tracy and some presidential candidates, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, went to the event. Both of them wanted to compete with Putin in the next election and disagreed with his war in Ukraine. But neither of them were allowed to be on the ballot.
A picture inside the church showed Navalny’s body in an open casket with red and white flowers on top, and his mother sitting next to it holding a candle.
Navalny’s dad was there too, but it was not known if anyone else from his family was there. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, spoke at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France two days ago. His daughter is studying at Stanford University, and we don’t know where his son is.
The politician’s friends left Russia because they were under pressure. They watched his funeral online from a different country.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warned people in Moscow and other places not to do anything illegal, because large gatherings without permission are against the law.
“Nadezhda Ivanova, who lives in Kaliningrad, said that people who pay attention to current events can see that this man is a hero of our country. We won’t forget him. ” “Everything that happened to him is really hard to understand and deal with. ”
After the quick funeral, a large group of people walked from the church to the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery. The police were also there in big numbers for the burial.
Navalny’s parents and others touched and kissed his body while the casket was open. At the same time, many people who support the person who passed away came to the cemetery. They were shouting, “We want to come in and say goodbye. ”
They put the coffin in the ground, allies said.
Navalny’s mom, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent eight days asking officials to let her have her son’s body after he died in February. 16 people died at a prison camp. In a town called Kharp, in a place called Yamalo-Nenets region, which is about 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
Even on Friday, the place where the body was being kept took a long time to let it go, according to Ivan Zhdanov, who is a close friend of Navalny and is in charge of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
The police said they couldn’t give back the body because they needed to do some tests on it after the person had died. Navalnaya asked Putin to let her bury her son properly and with respect, in a video.
One person in charge of funerals said he was not allowed to help Navalny’s supporters, according to Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh on social media. They had a hard time finding a car to carry the coffin.
Yarmysh said that people we don’t know are calling and threatening others not to move Alexei’s body.
The Russian government has not said why Navalny, who was 47, died.
Navalny went to jail in January 2021 after coming back to Moscow from Germany, where he was getting better from being poisoned with a nerve agent that he said the Kremlin did.
The Russian government said his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his offices in different areas were “extremist organizations” that year.
His wife said that Putin and the Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, tried to stop a public funeral.
“We just want people to have the chance to say goodbye to Alexei in a regular way. No special treatment needed,” Yulia Navalnaya wrote on the platform previously known as Twitter. In a talk to European lawmakers on Wednesday, she also said she was worried that the police might interrupt the gathering or would “arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband. ”
The government in Moscow said no to holding a special event to remember Navalny and Boris Nemtsov because of COVID-19 rules. This was announced by politician Yekaterina Duntsova. Nemtsov, who used to be a deputy prime minister, was killed while walking on a bridge near the Kremlin on the night of February. He was 55 years old. 27th of May, 2015.
Yarmysh requested that people who support Navalny put flowers in his memory on Friday.
Yarmysh said on Thursday that everyone who knew Alexei said he was a happy, brave, and truthful person. “But the real truth is that even if you didn’t meet Alexei, you still knew what kind of person he was. ” You helped with his investigations, you joined him at rallies, and you read his posts while he was in prison. His behavior taught a lot of people how to act even when things were frightening and hard.