Navalny's funeral to be Friday
Aides: Public event could be cancelled
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, will be buried Friday after a funeral service in Moscow that will be open to the public, his family and aides said Wednesday, while warning that authorities could try to prevent people from attending or force the service to be called off.
The planned funeral, at a church on Moscow's outskirts, sets up the possibility of a rare display of opposition sentiment in the Russian capital, and of a new crackdown on Navalny's supporters. Although the opposition leader's spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, advised anyone planning to attend to “come early,” his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, later cautioned that mourners might be detained.
“I'm not sure yet whether it will be peaceful or whether the police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband,” Navalnaya said to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Two hours after Yarmysh announced plans for the funeral, another top aide to Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, posted on the Telegram social messaging app that “Putin is releasing all his dogs to prevent the funeral from taking place normally.”
Zhdanov said on the Navalny team's social media accounts that Russian authorities were continuing to pressure Navalny's family to hold only a “quiet, family funeral.” Otherwise, he said, the Kremlin was threatening to “disrupt it all.”
If the funeral does go ahead, mourners will be taking a risk by attending. Hundreds of people who turned out across Russia at spontaneous memorials for Navalny after his death were detained, according to OVD-Info, a Russian-based rights group.
Ever since Russian authorities reported Navalny's death, on Feb. 16, his associates have said that the Kremlin has tried to prevent a funeral for him in Moscow that could become a flashpoint for dissent.
At one point, his team said, authorities in the Arctic region where Navalny died in a penal colony threatened to bury him on the prison grounds if his mother did not agree to a private funeral. The Kremlin has denied being involved in any such discussions.