The prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison two weeks ago, will finally be buried on Friday, March 1, in a Moscow cemetery, his spokesman announced this Wednesday.
Previously, at 2:00 p.m. (noon in Barcelona), a religious funeral will be held in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God, in the Moscow neighborhood of Márino, Kira Yármish said in a message on the social network formerly Twitters). There the farewell will be public, and the spokesperson asked those who wish to attend to go early.
After the religious service and farewell in the funeral chapel, Alexei Navalny will be buried in the Borisovo Cemetery, in the southeast of the Russian capital.
The lawyer and opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who was 47 years old and was serving a combined sentence of three decades in prison, died on February 16 in a remote prison in the Russian prison system, known as Polar Wolf for its harsh living conditions. The IK-3 penal colony in the village of Jarp, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, is located 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow and 60 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
The Investigative Committee is still investigating the causes of his death. The death certificate given to his mother, Ludmila Naválnaya, indicates that she died of natural causes, said the anti-corruption blogger’s allies. According to prison authorities, the opponent felt ill after taking a walk, lost consciousness and then neither the prison services nor the ambulance that arrived could do anything to revive him.
Navalny’s co-religionists reject this version and directly accuse the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, of ordering what they call “murder.”
His former right-hand woman, María Pévchij, said this week in a video posted on YouTube that Navalny was about to be exchanged for Russian hitman Vadim Krásikov, who is serving a life sentence in Germany for a murder. But according to her, Putin frustrated this exchange and ordered Navalny’s death because he could not stand the fact that his main critic was freed.
Many Western leaders also hold the Russian leader responsible. The Kremlin has described these accusations as “unacceptable” and its spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, asked to wait for the official conclusions of the analyzes and autopsy.
Peskov has also denied that the Kremlin was aware of any prisoner exchange negotiations in which Navalny was included.
The opposition’s allies, who for a week were demanding that the authorities hand over the body to his mother, reported on Tuesday difficulties in organizing the funeral.
Yármish said that they had called “most of the funeral agencies”, both public and private, but none had agreed to grant them a space for the opposition’s funeral chapel. “Some say they have all the rooms occupied and others refuse as soon as they hear Navalny’s last name,” he said.
Another Navalny collaborator, Iván Zhdanov, said on his Telegram channel that the opponents had initially planned the farewell and funeral on Thursday, February 29. But it proved impossible to order bereavement services for that day.
“It quickly became clear that by February 29 there was not a single person who could dig a grave. It was possible on March 1, also on February 28. But on the 29th a grave is not dug,” Zhdanov wrote.
In his opinion, the refusal to hold the funeral on February 29 is due to the fact that that day the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is going to deliver his annual state of the nation address to the Federal Assembly (both chambers). of parliament assembled).
