Thousands of people thronged a neighborhood on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday – some carrying flowers and chanting “No to war!” — as they tried to catch a glimpse of Aleksei A. Navalny’s funeral. The blast turned the opposition leader’s last rites into a dramatic display of dissent in Russia at a time of deep repression.
The service was held under close watch by Russian authorities, who have arrested hundreds of mourners at memorials since Mr Navalny died. Police presence was heavy around the church where funerals began shortly after 2pm local time.
After a procession to the cemetery, Mr Navalny’s coffin was placed next to his freshly dug grave. Video streamed live by the website showed members of his family and then other mourners saying their last goodbyes. His face was then covered with a white cloth and the coffin was lowered to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and then to the final song from “Terminator 2,” which Mr. Navalny are considered “The best movie on Earth.” The mourners passed slowly, each taking a handful of earth and throwing it into the grave.
People had chanted Mr Navalny’s last name earlier as his coffin was carried into the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, a Russian Orthodox church in southern Moscow. Images on social media showed attendees lining up, but also security cameras that local media reported had recently been installed, and signs prohibiting mourners from taking photos or videos inside the church.
A photo taken inside the church and posted on Mr Navalny’s YouTube channel showed him in an open coffin, lying with red and white flowers on his body. His parents were holding lit candles. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue his political activities, and his children, Daria and Zakhar, who no longer live in Russia, did not appear to be present.
As the funeral was winding down, Ms Navalnaya shared a post on social media platform X dedicated to her husband.
“Liosa, thank you for 26 years of absolute happiness,” she wrote, using her husband’s nickname. “Yes, even the last three years of happiness,” she said, referring to the time Mr Navalny was in prison. “I don’t know how to live without you, but I’ll try to make you up there happy for me and proud of me.”
Outside the church, people chanted: “Thank you, Alexei” and “Love is stronger than fear,” according to video footage from the scene. As they gathered by the cemetery, mourners chanted, “Peace for Ukraine — freedom for Russia!” Mourners who saw Mr Navalny’s mother said “thank you for your son!” One observer, Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milasina, said in a Facebook post that she believed “tens of thousands” of people had gathered. There was no way to verify this number.
Around 3:15 p.m., videos showed the crowd throwing flowers in the street as the body left the church for the cemetery.
Nearly 270,000 people watched a live stream of the event organized by Mr Navalny’s allies, while around 150,000 watched YouTube coverage by independent TV Rain, according to figures provided by the streaming platform.
Navalny’s team accused the authorities of trying to prevent people from sharing photos and videos from the scene. Mikhail Klimaryov, director of a Russian internet freedom group, the Internet Protection Society, said his group’s data showed mobile phone service in the region had been downgraded to the lower-bandwidth 3G standard and described it as a “cell phone shutdown ».
Opposition politicians, including Boris Nadezhdin, who sought to run against President Vladimir V. Putin in elections this month on an anti-war platform, and Yekaterinburg’s Yevgeny Roizman were in attendance, showing video of the event. The United States ambassador to Russia, Lynne M. Tracy, was also seen on video from outside the church.
Some people traveled from far away to attend the funeral. Anastasia, 19, had flown from Novosibirsk, 1,800 miles from Moscow, to attend.
“I came here because this is a historic event,” he said in a voicemail from the neighborhood where the church service was held. “I think he is a freer man than all of us,” he said of Mr Navalny. “He lived a free man and died a free man.”
In Russia, it is considered bad luck to give living people an even number of flowers in a bouquet – these are reserved for funerals. But Anastasia said many mourners brought odd-numbered bouquets, “because for them Navalny lives.”
Asked on Friday if he could comment on Mr. Navalny’s political legacy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov said: “I cannot.” He suggested that the Kremlin would crack down on anyone who tried to protest during the funeral. “Any unauthorized gatherings will be against the law,” Mr. Peskov told reporters during a daily telephone call.
The funeral was not reported among the top stories in the state news agencies RIA Novosti or TASS.
Mr Navalny’s funeral came during a period of intense repression and less than three weeks before Mr Putin seeks another six-year term in elections scheduled for mid-March.
At least 400 people have been detained since Mr Navalny’s death, according to the OVD-Info monitoring service, including some for simply laying flowers at makeshift memorials to him. A priest who tried to say a funeral prayer for Mr Navalny in St Petersburg was arrested as he left his home. OVD-Info also reported 128 bookings in 19 cities on Friday.
Hours before planned mourning ceremonies, Mr Navalny’s family had not received his body from a Moscow mortuary, a spokeswoman said. But the body was finally handed over around 12:30pm local time, he said.
Over the past two weeks, members of Mr. Navalny’s team have repeatedly complained about the difficulty of negotiating with Russian authorities to release Mr. Navalny’s body to his family, which took days, and to agree on a place for the funeral ceremony.
Members of his group described difficulty in persuading a church, a cemetery and even a hearse to participate in the burial, saying the authorities wanted to prevent Mr Navalny’s funeral from becoming a flashpoint for controversy.
On Thursday, allies of Mr Navalny, who was 47, described systemic pressure on all hearse operators, saying several who had agreed to take Mr Navalny’s body from the church to the cemetery had pulled out at the last minute, citing threats. His team and his wife blamed the Kremlin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Their claims could not be independently verified.
“People in the Kremlin killed him, then they mocked Alexei’s body, then they mocked his mother, and now they are mocking his memory,” Ms Navalnaya he wrote on Wednesday.
According to Mr Navalny’s spokeswoman, the official medical report concluded that the cause of death was “natural causes”, which his family, supporters and human rights watchdogs dispute. Over the past year and a half, Mr Navalny has been ordered to spend 296 days in a punishment isolation cell, known in Russian as “SHIZO”. It is considered the most severe form of legal punishment for prisoners in Russian prisons.
“They tortured him with hunger, they tortured him with cold,” his aide Leonid Volkov said during a live broadcast of the funeral on Mr Navalny’s YouTube channel. For half a year, she sued to get access to a dentist, which was ultimately denied.
On Friday, the regional branch of a commission that monitors conditions in Russian prisons said it had found “no significant violations” at the notoriously harsh penal colony where Mr Navalny died. When asked if the dissident’s death occurred during the inspection, the local committee chairman said no.
The Kremlin has rejected the family’s accusations of involvement and Mr Putin has not commented publicly on Mr Navalny’s death. But the Russian leader approved the promotion of the deputy director of the country’s Federal Penitentiary Service, Valery Boyarinev, just three days after Mr Navalny’s death.
And Mr Putin appeared defiant on Thursday in an annual address, threatening the West with nuclear escalation and praising Russia’s political system as “one of the foundations of the country’s sovereignty”.
While Mr Navalny opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the church where his funeral was held publicly showed support for it. Photos posted on the social media page VK on Monday show priests in front of the church with a Lada car bought for soldiers taking part in what Russia calls its “Special Military Operation”.
There was a fear that anyone who came to the funeral could be added to a database and possibly punished later, a rights lawyer, Evgeny Smirnov, told TV Rain. Mr Navalny’s organization shared information offering legal advice to people planning to mourn him.
Anton TrojanowskiTatiana Firsova and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting from Berlin and Alina Lombzina from London.
