Friends and allies of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tuesday called for public and private funeral homes willing to host the ceremony in Moscow after strongman Vladimir Putin’s government warned against holding funerals. He said he couldn’t find it.
“We called the majority of private and state-run funeral companies, commercial organizations and funeral homes. Some said the premises were reserved, others refused to speak when asked Mr. Navalny’s name. There are too.” Said Navalny’s press secretary, Kyra Yarmysh, said on Tuesday.
“In one place, they directly told us that they had ordered us not to cooperate. A day after we started looking for a venue for the funeral, we still had no results,” she said.
Navalny died On February 16th, in darkness at a POW camp in the Arctic. Prison officials say Navalny, 47, died of natural causes, but his friends, family and allies say he was killed on orders from President Vladimir Putin.
Alexei Navalny appears on screen via video link from the IK-3 penal colony above the Arctic Circle during a hearing at the Moscow Supreme Court on January 11, 2024. (VERA SAVINA/AFP via Getty Images)
Navalny, who flew from Siberia to Moscow in August 2020, almost died from the Russian nerve agent Novichok. Navalny received life-saving treatment in Germany, was arrested on his return to Moscow in January 2021, and has been imprisoned ever since on charges of embezzlement and extremism.
Days after Navalny’s death, his widow, Yulia, accused prison officials of refusing to release his body because they needed time to hide the additional doses of Novichok that killed him. .
Navalny’s remains have finally been discovered personally delivered His mother Lyudmila Navalnaya, who had been waiting in the North Pole for more than a week, was informed on Saturday.
Yulia accused Russian authorities of “torturing” Navalny’s family and desecrating his memory by holding his body for long periods of time. Lyudmila said government officials would secretly remove Navalny’s body and hold a secret burial because Putin did not want opposition parties or disgruntled Russians to turn Navalny’s ceremony into a large political rally. He said he was told that he could collect the body only if he promised to do so.kremlin fired On Monday, the claims were criticized as “absurd”.
Russian police have already arrested Hundreds of Navalny’s mourners from around the country attended, as well as journalists covering the rally.
People pay their last respects and lay flowers to Alexei Navalny at a monument in Moscow, Russia, on February 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlyanichenko)
Tuesday, Radio Free Europe (RFE) report Social media posts from Russia claimed that Moscow’s Borisovskoe Cemetery had begun preparations for Mr. Navalny’s burial and tentatively scheduled a ceremony for Friday. An unidentified video clip showed the cemetery’s parking lot being cleared of snow and filled with police vehicles.
Other posts on the chat site Telegram suggested that Navalny could be buried at the Khobanskoye or Troekurovskoye cemeteries, also in Moscow.
President Putin is It is scheduled He is scheduled to address the Russian parliament on Friday.The speech is as follows broadcast It will be shown in 17 movie theaters nationwide. The government is conducting a large-scale advertising campaign to turn this speech into a large-scale public event and fill theaters to capacity.
anonymous source Quote by uk daily mail On Tuesday, the Kremlin said it was nervous that Mr. Navalny’s funeral could spoil Mr. Putin’s speech, especially if Mr. Navalny’s mourners clashed with police. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday directly warned Navalny’s supporters not to turn his funeral into a destructive event.
“These people, the so-called supporters, are well known for their provocative calls to break the laws of the Russian Federation,” Peskov sneered.
“This is a very harmful practice and has legal and law enforcement consequences for those who respond to these calls,” he warned.
