2024-03-02 16:06:00
This content was published on March 2, 2024 – 5:06 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) The mother of Alexeï Navalny, the main critic of Vladimir Putin who died in prison in murky circumstances, visited his grave on Saturday. The funeral brought together thousands of Russians on Friday.
Mr. Navalny, the Russian president’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 19-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.
Already present during the burial of the coffin on Friday, the mother of the opponent, Lyudmila Navalnaïa, went again early Saturday morning to his grave, covered with flowers and wreaths, at the Borisovo cemetery, in the south from Moscow. She was accompanied by Alla Abrossimova, the mother of Mr. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya.
Yulia Navalnaya, the couple’s two children and Mr Navalny’s brother live abroad and did not attend the funeral, where they could have been arrested for opposing the Russian president. Alexei Navalny’s widow has vowed to continue her husband’s work and has repeatedly said in recent days that Mr Putin had “murdered” him.
On Friday, thousands of Mr Navalny’s supporters had queued for hours to pay their respects. As they streamed from a nearby church toward the cemetery, some chanted “No to war!” and other slogans in favor of Navalny, including calling Putin a “murderer” and calling for the “release of political prisoners”.
At least 128 people arrested
Human rights NGO OVD-Info said Russian police arrested at least 128 people participating in tributes to Navalny in 19 cities on Friday.
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.
The Kremlin has since cracked down hard on dissent and used tough new military censorship laws to prosecute hundreds of people who spoke out publicly against the offensive. This all-out repression, in addition to the partial mobilization in the fall of 2022, has also pushed a number of Russians to go abroad.
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