“Everything that was built here during all these years with him was buried here,” laments Roman, a 29-year-old who says he works in IT. Hundreds of Russians continued to parade on Saturday March 2 in Moscow in front of the grave of Alexeï Navalny, the main detractor of Vladimir Putin, who died in prison, to pay tribute to him, the day after a funeral where thousands of Muscovites gathered despite the Kremlin’s warnings.
In the afternoon and under a winter sun, dozens of people lined up in front of the opponent’s grave, bouquets of flowers in hand, noted a journalist from Agence France-Presse. Like the day before, the police had installed metal detection gates at the entrance to the cemetery. Some of the people who came, including many young people who constitute the base of Navalny’s support, passed in front of the opponent’s grave with tears in their eyes.
The day before, some had chanted “No to war! ” and other slogans in support of Navalny, including calling Putin a “murderer” and calling for the “release of political prisoners.”
Already present on Friday, his mother, Lioudmila Navalnaïa, paid tribute again on Saturday morning to her son’s grave, largely covered with flowers and wreaths, at the Borissov cemetery, in the south of the Russian capital. She was accompanied by Alla Abrossimova, the mother of Mr. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya.
His wife, Yulia Navalnaïa, as well as the couple’s two children and his brother, live abroad and were unable to attend the funeral, where they could have been arrested for opposing the Kremlin. Alexei Navalny’s widow has vowed to continue her husband’s work and has repeatedly said in recent days that Vladimir Putin “assassinated” him, something the Kremlin strongly denies.
128 people arrested on Friday
Mr. Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic for more than a decade, died on February 16 at the age of 47 in an Arctic penal colony, where he was serving a nineteen-year prison sentence for “extremism.” The multiple trials brought against him had been widely denounced as a way of punishing him for his opposition to Vladimir Putin.
Human rights NGO OVD-Info said Russian police arrested at least 128 people participating in tributes to Navalny in 19 cities on Friday. The Kremlin had warned supporters of the opponent of potential sanctions in the event of participation in any “unauthorized” demonstration on the occasion of this funeral.
The scenes of thousands of people marching in support of Mr Navalny, demanding an end to the Russian assault in Ukraine and castigating the Kremlin, have not been seen in Russia since the first days after Moscow’s order hundreds of thousands of soldiers to cross the border at the end of February 2022.
