Workers carry the coffin and a portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny out of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. Relatives and supporters of Alexei Navalny are bidding farewell to the opposition leader at a funeral in southeastern Moscow, following a battle with authorities over the release of his body after his still-unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony.
| Photo Credit: AP

Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bade farewell on Friday to Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.

The service followed a battle with authorities over the release of the body of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic. His supporters said several churches in Moscow refused to hold the funeral for the man who crusaded against official corruption and organised big protests. Many Western leaders blamed the death on the Russian leader, an accusation the Kremlin angrily rejected.

Mr. Navalny’s team eventually got permission from the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, which was encircled by crowd-control barriers on Friday.

As his coffin was removed from the hearse and taken inside the church, the crowd waiting outside broke into respectful applause and then chanted: “Navalny! Navalny!” Some also shouted, “You weren’t afraid, neither are we!” and later “No to war!”

Western diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Lynn Tracy, were among those who attended, along with presidential hopefuls Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova. Both wanted to run against Mr. Putin in the upcoming presidential elections and opposed his war in Ukraine; neither was allowed on the ballot.

A photo from inside the church showed an open casket with Mr. Navalny’s body covered with red and white flowers, and his mother sitting beside it holding a candle.

Mr. Navalny’s father was also present, but it was not clear who else in his family attended. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, just two days ago addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg in France; his daughter is a student at the Stanford University, and the whereabouts of his son are unknown.

The politician’s closest associates have left Russia under pressure and watched the funeral, which was streamed live on his YouTube channel, from abroad.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those gathering in Moscow and other places not to break the law, saying any “unauthorised (mass) gatherings” are violations.

“Those people who follow what is happening, it is of course obvious to them that this man is a hero of our country, whom we will not forget,” said Nadezhda Ivanova, a Kaliningrad resident who was outside the church with other supporters. “What was done to him is incredibly difficult to accept and get through it.”

After the short funeral, a crowd of thousands marched from the church to the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery, where the police were also out in force for the burial.

With the casket open, Mr. Navalny’s parents and others stroked and kissed his body. Meanwhile, a large crowd of supporters gathered at the gates of the cemetery, chanting: “Let us in to say say goodbye!”

The coffin was then lowered into the ground, allies said.

Mr. Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent eight days trying to get authorities to release the body following his February 16 death at Penal Colony No. 3 in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 km northeast of Moscow.

Even on Friday itself, the morgue where the body was being held delayed its release, according to Ivan Zhdanov, Mr. Navalny’s close ally and director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Authorities originally said they could not turn over the body because they needed to conduct post-mortem tests. Ms. Navalnaya made a video appeal to Mr. Putin to release it so she could bury her son with dignity.

At least one funeral director said he had been “forbidden” to work with Navalny’s supporters, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on social media. They also struggled to find a hearse.

“Unknown people are calling up people and threatening them not to take Mr. Alexei’s body anywhere,” Ms. Yarmysh said Thursday.

Russian authorities still have not announced the cause of death for Mr. Navalny, who was 47.

Mr. Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

His Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were designated as “extremist organisations” by the Russian government that same year.

His widow accused Mr. Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of trying to block a public funeral.

“We don’t want any special treatment — just to give people the opportunity to say farewell to Alexei in a normal way,” Yulia Navalnaya wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a speech to European lawmakers on Wednesday, she also expressed fears that police might interfere with the gathering or would “arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband.”

Moscow authorities refused permission for a separate memorial event for Mr. Navalny and slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Friday, citing COVID-19 restrictions, according to politician Yekaterina Duntsova said. Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy Prime Minister, was shot to death as he walked on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin on the night of February 27, 2015.

Ms. Yarmysh also urged Navalny’s supporters around the world to lay flowers in his honor on Friday.

“Everyone who knew Alexei says what a cheerful, courageous and honest person he was,” Ms. Yarmysh said Thursday. “But the greater truth is that even if you never met Alexei, you knew what he was like, too. You shared his investigations, you went to rallies with him, you read his posts from prison. His example showed many people what to do when even when things were scary and difficult.”

Yulia Navalnaya, wife of dead Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Alexei Navalny’s widow said Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered that his arch critic’s body should not be handed over to his family after his death in an Arctic jail nine days ago.

Navalny’s mother has said authorities in the Arctic town of Salekhard are threatening to bury him on the prison grounds if she did not agree to a “secret” funeral.

“You tortured him alive, now you torture him while he is dead,” Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue her husband’s work, said in a new video.

Also Read: Alexei Navalny | The man who stood up to Putin

“I completely understand that this has not been curated by some investigator in Salekhard. Putin is directing it all,” she said.

“It’s Putin saying ‘put pressure on the mother, break her, tell her the body of her son is rotting’,” she said.

She said Navalny’s mother, who travelled to the remote prison colony where he died, is being “tormented” by authorities.

“This is the same Putin that likes to show that he is a practising Christian,” she said.

Mr. Putin has for decades portrayed himself as a devoted Orthodox Christian and has in recent years focused on promoting what he calls “traditional values.”

“We always knew that Putin’s faith is fake, but now we can see it like never before,” Ms. Navalnaya said.

Also Read: Reeling from Navalny’s death, Russian opposition vows to fight on

She also denounced Mr. Putin’s decision to launch the Ukraine campaign two years ago.

“You will answer for all of this.. And for this (Navalny’s death) and for the war that you unleashed two years ago, also hiding behind Christian values.

“You are just killing. You are just killing sleeping people at night with missiles blessed by the church,” she said.

Moscow:

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on Saturday demanded that Russian authorities release his body for burial and accused a “demonic” Russian President Vladimir Putin of “torturing” his corpse.

In a six-minute video posted on YouTube, Navalnaya accused Putin of holding her husband’s body “hostage”, and questioned Putin’s often-professed Christian faith.

Navalny’s mother Lyudmila said on Friday that Russian investigators were refusing to release his body from a morgue in the remote Arctic city of Salekhard until she agreed to lay him to rest without a public funeral.

She said an official had told her that she should agree to their demands, as Navalny’s body was already decomposing.

On Saturday, Navalny aides said that authorities had threatened to bury him in the remote prison colony where he died unless his family agreed to their conditions.

In the video, an emotional Yulia Navalnaya claimed that Putin personally was responsible for the whereabouts of Navalny’s body, and that he was “torturing” Navalny in death as he had in life.

“We already knew that Putin’s faith was fake. But now we see it more clearly than ever before,” said Navalnaya, dressed in black.

“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with Alexei’s body.”

Since returning to the Russian presidency in 2012, Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as a defender of traditional, conservative values against what he portrays as corrosive Western liberalism.

He has also trumpeted his closeness to Russia’s Orthodox Church, regularly appearing at services around religious festivals, and speaking of his personal faith.

Navalnaya said her husband had been a devout Christian, who attended church and had fasted for Lent even while in prison. She said his political activism had been inspired by Christian values.

Concluding her video, she said: “Give us back the body of my husband. We want to hold a funeral service and bury him in a humane way, in the ground, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)