Grief, anger, candles, and lots of police. Only a few words are needed to describe the essence of the funeral of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who died – or was killed, according to his followers – at the age of 47 in an Arctic penal colony last Feb. 16.
The funeral of Russia’s most famous dissident took place Friday morning in Maryino, a southeastern suburb of Moscow at the Orthodox Church of the Icon of the Mother of God. Ironically, not many months ago , the latter collected donations to fund the Russian military and the war in Ukraine – which the deceased activist had vehemently opposed.
The heavy presence of officers, who set up barriers around the shrine and metal detectors to access it, did not deter in the least the influx of thousands of people from all over the country. Among them were the ambassadors of France and Germany, U.S. Embassy officials, pro-peace candidates excluded from the March presidential elections Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, former mayor of Yekaterinburg Evgenij Roizman, activists Yulia Galyamina, Nikolai Lyaskin, and many others.
Anatoly and Lyudmila Navalny were also there, sitting next to each other in the church. The dissident’s parents both held a candle, before attending the final burial in the nearby Borisovo cemetery.
Navalny’s exiled wife Yulia and the couple’s two children were the most notable absentees. However, the consort wished to pay a moving farewell message to her ‘Lyosha’: “I don’t know how to live without you, but I will try to make you happy for me and proud of me. I don’t know if I can, but I will try,” she wrote on Telegram.
If the walls of the church were imbued with sadness and emotion, outside, anger reigned supreme. “Navalny! Navalny,” “Putin is a murderer,” “Russia will be free,” “No to war,” “Russia without Putin,” and “We will not forget” were just some of the slogans shouted as the coffin was carried out.
In different times, arrests would have followed. Not today, at least according to the Vyorstka investigative news agency, which, citing anonymous sources inside the police, said that the imperative today was not to make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.” The aim of the strategy was clearly not to heat up tempers any more than they already are, although independent sources report at least 21 arrests between Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and other major cities where there have been impromptu sit-ins of commemoration.
The Kremlin, however, said any rally in support of Navalny will be in violation of the law. “Any unauthorized gathering will violate the law and those who participate in it will be held accountable, always in line with the current law,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov – the only official comment on the dissident’s funeral.
At the time of his death, Navalny was serving a sentence of more than 30 years in prison for a series of criminal offenses related to fraud and extremism, which he and most Western governments believe to be politically motivated. After seeking treatment in Germany in 2021 for alleged novichok nerve agent poisoning, Navalny resoundingly decided to return to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and then transferred to the Siberian prison where he met his controversial death last month.
