Navalny’s widow worried about arrests as funeral set for Putin critic
(CNN) — The wife of the late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny said she is concerned that police will crack down on mourners after it was announced his funeral will take place on Friday in Moscow.
Posted — UpdatedYulia Navalnaya on Wednesday addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, shortly after Navalny’s aides announced they had arranged his funeral after spending more than a week trying to retrieve his body and find a suitable venue.
“I thought that in the 12 days since Alexey’s murder, I would have time to prepare for this speech. But first we spent a week getting Alexey’s body and organizing his funeral. Then I chose the cemetery and coffin,” Navalnaya said.
“I’m not sure yet whether it will be peaceful or whether police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband,” she added.
Navalny’s death was met with grief and anger across the world as well as inside Russia, where the smallest acts of political dissent carry huge risks. More than 400 people were detained at makeshift memorials for Navalny across 32 Russian cities, according to human rights monitoring group OVD-Info.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, confirmed his funeral will be held at Borisov Cemetery in Moscow’s Maryino district, where Navalny lived. She said the service will take place at 2 p.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God and encouraged mourners to arrive early.
Nalavny’s aides said they began to look for a church soon after his death but that many venues were not willing to host his funeral.
“Everywhere they refused to give us anything. Somewhere they directly referred to the ban,” Ivan Zdhanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote Wednesday on X. “We don’t care about the message. Alexey needs to be buried.”
With Navalny’s wife and team in exile, his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent more than a week on a solitary mission in Siberia to retrieve her son’s body from Russian authorities, whom she accused authorities of “blackmailing” her by threatening to bury her son without a funeral unless she agreed to “conditions for where, when and how” he should be buried. The Kremlin denied her allegations.
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