Navalni’s widow: “I don’t know if the regime will let my husband’s funeral be peaceful” |

Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime does not stop harassing the opponent Alexei Navalny and what he represents, even in death. The dissident, who died in an Arctic prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence, will be buried this Friday in Moscow, after his family battled for days to recover his body. The Kremlin has tried at all costs to avoid the funeral of Navalni, who established himself as the great opponent of Putin, from being an open event for fear that it would become a rare moment of contestation in a country whose security apparatus prohibits any hint of protest. The dissident’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, warned this Wednesday that the Russian authorities may charge those attending the ceremony. “I’m not sure if they will let it be peaceful or if the police will arrest those who are going to say goodbye to my husband,” she declared, visibly emotional, in a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

The Russian authorities are trying to avoid any tribute to Navalni, who died on February 16 in a remote penal colony. Kira Yarmish, spokesperson for the dissident, has also explained that her team has tried to find a place to organize a larger farewell event, after the mass in an Orthodox church in the Moscow neighborhood where Navalny lived and the funeral, and that they have not achieved it due to a mixture of fear of reprisals from the owners of the premises and pressure from the authorities.

Navalni’s mother has had to fight for days to be able to bury the opponent in an open ceremony, after the authorities threatened to cremate the body if her intention was to hold a public ceremony, as explained by her lawyer. The ceremony is not a demonstration and, therefore, has not been considered illegal as such, but Navalny’s team and civil rights organizations fear that attendees will also be persecuted. The organizations of the opponent, who died at the age of 47, were declared “extremist” and any connection with them could lead to judicial persecution equivalent to terrorism crimes.

The funeral has been scheduled one day after Putin’s annual speech to the Russian Federal Assembly (it will be held on Thursday before both chambers) and at a time of unprecedented repression against any social protest prior to the March 17 vote. in which the Russian autocrat, who has been in power for 25 years, will remain in the Kremlin chair until 2030 and at a time when he has raised the threat not only to Ukraine, which he invaded two years ago, but towards all the West. Several Western diplomats plan to attend the ceremony in memory of the opponent, not only to pay their respects to him, but also to try with their presence to ensure that the farewell is peaceful, a community source has pointed out.

Yulia Navalnaya, who has risen as a political figure after the death of her husband and is trying to gain a foothold in the fragmented Russian opposition, called this Wednesday in the European Parliament for “more creative measures” to corner the Kremlin, which despite Western sanctions continue to maintain the war effort against Ukraine and its policy of harassment to sweep away all dissent.

Get used to war

“Two years have passed [de guerra], of exhaustion, of blood, of disappointment. Putin has achieved nothing. He has done everything, but nothing works. And the worst has happened, that people have become accustomed to war and there are those who are even beginning to consider whether an agreement should be reached,” Navalnaya emphasized before the MEPs in Strasbourg. “And then, Putin killed my husband,” she said. And she has recalled the trajectory of the opponent, who already suffered a near-fatal poisoning orchestrated by the Kremlin in 2020.

“To defeat Putin you have to be innovative, you cannot defeat him with resolutions, you cannot think that he is a person of principles, with morals,” he warned. “We are not addressing a politician, but a monster,” stressed Navalnaya, who has asked to round up those who help Putin and his circle — “a gang of thieves” — and also for Europe to count on the Russian opposition to and with the tens of thousands of people who are against the regime and against the war in Ukraine. “They should not persecute us, but work with us,” she claimed.

The acts of tribute to the opponent have become a challenge for the Kremlin. Hours after learning of Navalny’s death, thousands of Russians began to lay flowers at monuments to the victims of political repression throughout the country. Despite the random arrests—the vast majority of citizens came in silence and left—and the authorities throwing the bouquets into the trash at night, the Russians continued placing flowers the following days. At least 400 people were arrested in 39 cities, according to the organization OVD-Info. In another funeral with a certain distant resemblance, that of the rebel leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin ordered to prevent access to his grave with a perimeter of hundreds of security agents.

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