Navalny’s team says they still haven’t found a hearse to take him away
Hours before the funeral, Navalny’s team says they still haven’t found a hearse to carry his body because of threats to drivers by “unknown persons”.
His spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, wrote on the social network: “At first, we were not allowed to rent a funeral hall to say goodbye to Alexei.”
“Now, when there is only a funeral to be held in the church, Ritual agents tell us that no hearse is willing to take the body there,” he added, referring to Ritual, Russia’s main funeral service. “Unknown people are calling all the teams and threatening not to take Alexei’s body anywhere.”
There is a strong police presence in front of the church where Navalny’s funeral will be held
Special forces police gathered near the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow today. Barriers have also been erected in the area.
Navalny’s allies say the Kremlin tried to disrupt the funeral
The Kremlin, or at least those acting on behalf of the Kremlin, tried to derail the funeral yesterday by blocking the date they had chosen because it conflicted with Putin’s state of the nation address.
Even after that, several Moscow churches refused to hold services, his team said, and they still couldn’t find a hearse that wanted to carry his body until a few hours ago.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has blamed Putin for her husband’s death, claiming that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok on Putin’s orders and that his body was stored until traces of the poison disappeared. The Kremlin has denied the accusation of poisoning.
“They violated his body and raped his mother,” Navalny said this week after her death. a quiet, non-public funeral when the body has been kept for so long that it begins to decompose.
The body was finally returned last weekend.
The event of the Russian opposition leader’s burial in Moscow became a new flashpoint
The funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is to be held this morning. It is an event that reflects the struggle between the country’s marginalized protest movement in many countries around the world and President Vladimir Putin’s desire to silence it.
Navalny, who died on February 16 at the age of 47 in an Arctic penal colony, was the most prominent dissenting voice in Putin’s Russia, where government critics are jailed or exiled, protests are effectively banned and the press is shackled. Navalny’s team says he died of poisoning on Putin’s orders, a claim the Russian government denies.
According to Navalny’s family and team, even in death, Navalny’s funeral could become a flashpoint between mourners and police trying to erase any resentment against Putin in his memory. The OVD-Info human rights organization said that about 400 people who laid flowers in memory of Navalny were arrested in Russia.
“I’m still not sure if it will be peaceful or if the police will arrest those who came to say goodbye to my husband,” Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said in a speech to the European Parliament this week.