Alexei Navalny funeral: Hundreds gather in Moscow as service streamed live to YouTube

The funeral of former Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is being streamed live on YouTube

Hundreds of people gathered under a heavy police presence in south-east Moscow on Friday for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s funeral.

Workers carried his coffin into the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows after a hearse carrying his body arrived at the church. His coffin was taken to a cemetery after a short funeral service in the church.

It follows a battle with authorities over the release of his body after his still-unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony.

Pallbearers carry the coffin of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny out of the Mother of God Quench My Sorrows church after his funeral service. Picture: Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

His supporters say several churches in Moscow refused to hold the service before Mr Navalny’s team got permission from one in the capital’s Maryino district, where he once lived before his 2020 poisoning, treatment in Germany and subsequent arrest on his return to Russia.

On footage livestreamed to YouTube, his coffin could be seen being taken out of the vehicle, with the crowd applauding and chanting in the background: “Navalny! Navalny!”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those gathering in Moscow and other places not to break the law, saying any “unauthorised [mass] gatherings” are violations.

The Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, which was encircled by crowd-control barriers, did not mention the service on its social media page. Hours before the funeral was set to start, hundreds waited to enter the church under the watch of riot police who deployed in big numbers.

Western diplomats were spotted in the long line. Authorities lined the road from from a nearby subway station to the church with crowd-control barriers.

Burial was to follow in the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery, where police also showed up in force.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent eight days trying to get authorities to release the body following his February 16 death at Penal Colony No 3 in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,200 miles north-east of Moscow.

Authorities originally said they could not turn over the body because they needed to conduct post-mortem tests. Ms Navalnaya, 69, made a video appeal to President Vladimir Putin to release the body so she could bury her son with dignity.

Once it was released, at least one funeral director said he had been “forbidden” to work with Navalny’s supporters, the spokeswoman for Navalny’s team, Kira Yarmysh, said on social media. They also were unable to find a hearse for the funeral.

“Unknown people are calling up people and threatening them not to take Alexei’s body anywhere,” Ms Yarmysh said on Thursday.

Russian authorities still have not announced the cause of death for Navalny, 47, who crusaded against official corruption and organised large protests as Mr Putin’s fiercest political foe. Many Western leaders blamed the death on the Russian leader, which the Kremlin angrily rejected.

It was not immediately clear who among Navalny’s family or allies would attend the funeral, with many of his associates in exile abroad due to fear of prosecution in Russia.

Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were designated as “extremist organisations” by the Russian government in 2021.

The politician’s team said the funeral would be streamed live on Navalny’s YouTube channel.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, accused Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of trying to block a public funeral.

“We don’t want any special treatment — just to give people the opportunity to say farewell to Alexei in a normal way,” Yulia Navalnaya wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In a speech to European politicians on Wednesday in Strasbourg, France, she also expressed fears that police might interfere with the gathering or would “arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband”.

Moscow authorities refused permission for a separate memorial event for Navalny and late opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Friday, citing Covid-19 restrictions, politician Yekaterina Duntsova said on Thursday. Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime minister, was shot to death as he walked on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin on the night of February 27, 2015.

Ms Yarmysh also urged Navalny’s supporters around the world to lay flowers in his honour on Friday.

“Everyone who knew Alexei says what a cheerful, courageous and honest person he was,” Ms Yarmysh said on Thursday.

“But the greater truth is that even if you never met Alexei, you knew what he was like, too. You shared his investigations, you went to rallies with him, you read his posts from prison. His example showed many people what to do when even when things were scary and difficult.”

Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said that his funeral had initially been planned for Thursday — the day of Mr Putin’s annual state-of-the-nation address — but no venue agreed to hold it then.

In an interview with the independent Russian news site Meduza, Mr Zhdanov said authorities had pressured Navalny’s relatives to “have a quiet family funeral”.