Navalny to be buried in Moscow on Friday
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s funeral will be held in Moscow on Friday, his wife Yulia announced, but she said she was unsure if it would pass off peacefully and that plans for a civil memorial service had been blocked.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, posted on X that a service for Navalny would be held on Friday afternoon in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God in the Moscow district of Maryino where Navalny used to live.
Navalny would then be buried at the Borisovskoye cemetery, around 2.5 km away on the other side of the Moskva River. A Reuters reporter on Wednesday saw three police patrols at the snow-covered cemetery, which is located near a busy road.
Navalny’s allies accused the Kremlin of thwarting their attempts to organise a separate civil memorial service in a hall which could have accommodated more people, and of blocking plans to bury Navalny a day earlier. The Kremlin has said it has nothing to do with such arrangements.
“Two people — Vladimir Putin and (Moscow Mayor) Sergei Sobyanin — are to blame for the fact that we have no place for a civil memorial service and farewell to Alexei,” Yulia, his wife, wrote on X.
“People in the Kremlin killed him, then mocked Alexei’s body, then mocked his mother, now they are mocking his memory.”
The Kremlin denies any involvement in Navalny’s Feb. 16 death at age 47 in an Arctic penal colony and his death certificate — according to his supporters — says he died of natural causes.
Russian Orthodox funeral services are usually presided over by a priest and accompanied by choral singing, with attendees gathered around the open casket of the deceased to say their farewell. The chosen church is an imposing five-domed white building in a suburb of southeastern Moscow.
It was not immediately clear how the authorities would ensure crowd control.
But judging from previous gatherings of Navalny supporters - whom Russian authorities have designated as U.s.-backed extremists - a heavy police presence is likely and the authorities will break up anything they deem to resemble a political demonstration under protest laws.
“The funeral will take place the day after tomorrow and I’m not sure yet whether it will be peaceful or whether police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband,” Yulia said in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.