As Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was laid to rest on Thursday, his funeral presented a rare opportunity for his mourners and supporters to gather outside the church and register their opposition en masse to Russian President Vladimir Putin with the world watching.
The funeral for Navalny, who died in an arctic penal colony last month, was held in Moscow, where thousands of his mourners — flouting warnings from the government — paid their respects and, in some cases, engaged in protest against Putin.
In a video, Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said the Kremlin initially pressured her to bury her son in secret to avoid just such a spectacle, threatening that otherwise they might dispose of Navalny’s body themselves. She said she defied authorities on Navalny’s supporters’ behalf.
“I want you, who care about Alexei, for whom his death was a personal tragedy, to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him,” she said in the video recorded in the arctic town Salekhard near where Navalny died.
Apparently, Navalnaya’s position won out as Kremlin officials determined it would be better to let the public funeral go on. A former Putin speechwriter named Abbas Gallyamov speculated, “The Kremlin is trying to avoid heat ahead of the coming elections; it’s going to be socially disapproved if they are brutal.”
“This is a funeral, and if the Kremlin starts acting like it’s a political event, it would turn it into one,” he added, per The Wall Street Journal.
As a result, the funeral was held in Navalny’s old neighborhood at an Orthodox church, with the actual service attended by mostly relatives, per the WSJ. However, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Lynne Tracy and other senior Western diplomats were also on hand. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow posted on social media that the death of Navalny “is a tragic reminder of the lengths the Kremlin will go to silence its critics.”
Thousands of onlookers waited outside on the church grounds, with some taking the opportunity to blame Putin for killing Navalny, chanting, “Putin is a murderer,” and “Free political prisoners,” per the WSJ. Some also used the occasion to express their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shouting, “No to war.”
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who did not attend the funeral, posted a video montage of her late husband on Instagram. She added a message for her departed husband, concluding, “Love you forever. Rest in peace,” according to the WSJ.
But she also vowed that Putin, whom she ultimately blames for killing her husband, will one day be made to face justice: “Putin must answer for what he has done to my country,” she said, per the WSJ. “Putin must answer for what he has done to a neighboring, peaceful country. And Putin must answer for everything he has done to Alexei.”
