After the funeral of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, the crowd shouted “down with the power of murderers”

A crowd gathered this Friday, March 1, 2024, near the cemetery where Alexei Navalny was buried, chanted slogans against the Kremlin and against its offensive in Ukraine. “No to war!” the crowd shouted, as well as “We will not forgive!”as many supporters accuse President Vladimir Putin of the death of the Russian opponent.

The body of Vladimir Putin’s main detractor was briefly laid out in a church in Marino, a southeastern district of the Russian capital, in the presence of his relatives. In compliance with the Orthodox rite, the coffin was open, covered with dozens of red and white flowers. Several attendees carried candles, an AFP journalist noted.

The hearse with the activist’s coffin had arrived at the temple shortly before to the applause of the crowd.

From early in the morning, a long line of thousands of people formed, amidst high police surveillance, in front of the church, located in the district where Navalni lived before being arrested.

“It is painful, people like him should not die, honest people, with principles, willing to sacrifice themselves“said Anna Stepanova, also underlining the opponent’s “sense of humor.” “Even in pain he made jokes.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov warned that any “unauthorized” demonstration on the occasion of the funeral could be sanctioned. During his daily press conference, Peskov also stated that he had “nothing to say” to the deceased’s family.

After a quick funeral, the opponent’s coffin was transferred to the Borisovo cemetery, near the church and a few steps from the Moskva River, Ivan Jdanov, one of Navalny’s closest collaborators, indicated on Telegram.

The funeral took place two weeks after the death of the 47-year-old opponent, on February 16 in a prison in the Arctic in circumstances still to be clarified.

His collaborators, his widow and Western countries accuse President Putin of being responsible for his death, which the Kremlin denies. The body was held for eight days, a delay his team attributes to an attempt to cover up the cause of death.

Dozens of members of the security forces were deployed in the area and the authorities delimited the path between the church and the cemetery with metal barriers.

Three prominent Russian opposition figures, Evegueni Roizman, Boris Nadezhdin and Ekaterina Duntsova, as well as the ambassadors of France and Germany, attended the exequies.

Among the crowd were people with flowers and visibly excited. “We no longer have politicians like that and no one knows when there will be again,” Maria, a 55-year-old librarian, told AFP, who said she felt both “fear and sadness.”

For his part, Denis, a 26-year-old volunteer in a charitable association, stated that Navalni was the one who made him “interested in politics,” in a country with an increasingly authoritarian regime where young people’s disaffection with Those questions are very important.

After the family recovered the opponent’s body on Saturday, they had difficulty finding a place that would agree to host the ceremony.

However, Navalny’s team called on Muscovites to go to church and say goodbye to the deceased, and his supporters in other cities and abroad, to gather in front of memorials to honor his memory.

Some acts that could be annoying for the government, two weeks before the presidential elections of March 15 to 17, which will surely confirm Putin in power.

In the days after Navalni’s death, nearly 400 people were detained by the police in several improvised rallies.organized to pay tribute to him.

The opponent’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, regretted that no civil ceremony had been authorized to expose her husband’s body to the public, as is usually done when prominent personalities die in Russia.

“The people of the Kremlin killed him, then they dishonored his body, they dishonored his mother and now, they dishonored his memory“he criticized, accusing Putin and the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, of this situation.

Before his poisoning in 2020, which he narrowly survived and for which he accused Putin, and being arrested and sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism”, Navalny managed to mobilize a large number of people, especially in the Russian capital.

His movement, which investigated and exposed the corruption of Russian elites, was dismantled in recent years. Many of his collaborators were imprisoned or forced into exile.

Now, Yulia Navalnaya promises that she will continue her husband’s fight.