Navalny’s funeral to be held Friday in Moscow, day after Putin addresses Russian Federal Assembly
- The Russian opposition leader will be buried in the city’s Borisov cemetery following a funeral service at a church in the Marino district of southeast Moscow
- The funeral will take place a day after President Vladimir Putin gives his annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, who died in prison earlier this month, will be buried on Friday in Moscow, his spokeswoman said, after previously accusing authorities of trying to interfere with the activist’s funeral.
Navalny will be buried in the city’s Borisov cemetery following a funeral service at a church in the Marino district of southeast Moscow, Kira Yarmysh said Wednesday in a social media message that asked his supporters to attend.
Even amid an unprecedented Kremlin crackdown on dissent, the scale of the turnout is likely to be an indicator of the strength of opposition to his rule just weeks before the March 17 election that will hand him another six years in power.
Hundreds of people have been arrested after laying flowers in Navalny’s memory in Moscow and other cities since he died February 16 in a remote Arctic prison camp.
Yarmysh said on Tuesday that Navalny’s allies tried unsuccessfully to organise a farewell for him in Moscow, but nobody had been willing to hire out a hall to them.
“Some of them say the place is fully booked. Some refuse when we mention the surname ‘Navalny’,” she said. “In one place, we were told that the funeral agencies were forbidden to work with us.”