While Yulia Naválnaya published a photo with her husband and a simple “I love you” on social networks to show her love for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison on Friday, thousands of people continued to pay tribute to him yesterday in Russia, despite the risk of attending public gatherings that are understood as a challenge to power. As of Sunday afternoon, more than 400 people had been detained by the police.
These arrests were recorded in 36 cities in the country, according to the NGO OVD-Info, which has been declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities and is dedicated to reporting on police action during the protests in Russia.
More than half of the arrests, 201 of the 401 registered, were carried out in Saint Petersburg, the hometown of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since Friday, numerous Russians, according to the local press, have been going to monuments in honor of the victims of political repression or to small improvised altars in their cities, where they have left flowers, photographs and lit candles. At the end of each day, the police or municipal services removed the memorials, simply throwing away what for many Russian citizens has great symbolism. In any case, in the morning there were more flowers in the indicated places.
Alexei Navalny, who was 47 years old, was the most critical voice that Putin's Kremlin has encountered since he came to power, on the last day of 1999, more than 24 years ago.
In Moscow, the main places of tribute have been the Solovetsky Stone, next to Lubyanka Square; the Wall of Pain, both monuments in memory of the victims of Soviet repression; in addition to the bridge in front of the Kremlin where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in 2015.
Navalny died suddenly in the IK-3 penal colony in the Arctic town of Jarp, 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow, where the opponent was transferred in December. Russian prison authorities in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District issued a statement saying he had lost consciousness after a walk and was then unable to be revived.
Navalny was serving several sentences totaling three decades of deprivation of liberty for accusations that his followers have denounced as fabricated to remove him from politics and punish him for his anti-corruption activism against the political elites in Russia.
Western governments have held Putin directly responsible for Navalny's death, something the Kremlin considers “unacceptable.” His spokesperson, Dimitri Peskov, asked that they wait for the results of the autopsy.
According to Navalni's team, the investigators of the Instruction Committee have to carry out a second analysis and their results must be known this week. Until they carry out all the relevant tests, they will not deliver his remains to the family. Navalni's collaborators demanded on Saturday that they do so "immediately." Kira Yármish, who was the spokesperson for the prominent opponent, charged from exile against the Russian president and directly accused him of “killing” him in a video published on YouTube.
The United States ambassador in Moscow, Lynne Tracy, who did so yesterday, and her British counterpart, Nigel Casey, on Saturday, also attended to pay tribute to the Russian opponent, whose governments have attributed this sudden end to Putin and also lead Western support. to Ukraine, which has been defending itself from Russian military intervention in its territory for almost two years. Both placed bouquets of flowers on the Solovetski Stone.
