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Navalny, who was the most prominent challenger of President Vladimir Putin, often urged his supporters not to be afraid. And in the days after his death Friday at age 47 — his team says it was state-sponsored murder — hundreds have heeded Navalny’s call, risking arrest in the repressive climate of wartime Russia and braving bitter winter temperatures, to contribute to the piles of bouquets, which in some cases were quickly swept away by the authorities.
In other cases, it was the mourners who were swept away: at least 366 people have been arrested in 36 cities, including 200 in St. Petersburg, according to a watchdog group, OVD-Info, which tracks arrests. More than 29,000 people also put their names to a petition demanding that Navalny's body be released to his family. On Saturday, his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, traveled to the town above the Arctic Circle where he died but could not reclaim his remains.
Just as the authorities delayed Navalnaya’s right to bury her son, they initially seemed intent on denying Navalny’s supporters any right to grieve. Videos flooded social media showing brutal arrests of people holding placards at the memorials. Teenagers were detained for laying flowers for a man who was envisioned by many as Russia’s Nelson Mandela, a persecuted dissident destined to emerge one day from prison and lead his country to a democratic future.
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Some of those arrested now face two weeks in jail. In some towns, memorials were destroyed by groups of security agents. On Saturday in Moscow, at a bridge on which Putin critic Boris Nemtsov was shot and killed in 2015 and that has since served as a symbolic memorial, men identifying themselves as “volunteers” ripped up flowers and smashed candles.
“I am a volunteer who fights against traitors to the fatherland,” said a man in a balaclava when challenged by one mourner. “Glory to Russia!”
But by Sunday, the mood in Moscow, at least, had shifted, with authorities seeming to accept that it was better to allow a steady flow of people to pay their respects.
At the Solovetsky Stone, a memorial honoring victims of the Soviet gulags, which stands across from Lubyanka, an infamous KGB prison that is now the headquarters of its successor, the FSB, about 100 or so people approached the monument over the course of an hour, clutching red carnations and tulips.
Many wept. Some offered a prayer.
Mourners were politely directed by a dozen or so police officers who stood around the monument and instructed them not to spend more than a few minutes at the stone. Someone had placed a portrait of Navalny and his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, amid the stems. It was now submerged beneath snow and red roses.
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A young couple, Yevgeny, 26, and Yulia, 24, who asked to be identified only by their first names for fear of repercussions, were in floods of tears. Together, they said, they had attended every protest led by Navalny since 2019.
“He was our chance at freedom — with him, we really had a hope that everything could change,” Yulia said.
“He was a politician who really loved Russia and loved its people. He tried to change what he could and actually talked to people,” said Yevgeny, wiping his eyes.
The couple said they were surprised by the conduct of the police officers on Sunday. They said they had prepared to get arrested and had brought their passports and the phone number of a lawyer.
Ilya Aminyan brought his 3-year-old son, Iosef, to lay flowers. “This is one of those moments in which we have to unite and be here together,” Aminyan said. “Such a person should not have died like that, especially at a time like this.” Aminyan said that he, too, had attended massive street protests led by Navalny, before he was poisoned, after he sought to run for president but was barred from the ballot because of trumped-up criminal convictions.
“He was a very important person; he became a symbol,” Aminyan said. “Honestly, he became a legend.”
The mourners interviewed on Sunday all said they recalled the “unforgettable” scenes on Moscow’s Sakharov Avenue when, first in 2011, then in 2019, Navalny led giant street rallies against Putin and government corruption.
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Opposite Sakharov Avenue stands another memorial to political repression — known as the Wall of Tears — where on Sunday a trickle of people came to lay flowers. The site had been cordoned off and there was a heavy police presence. Riot officers and plain clothes security agents video-recorded mourners and checked documents. People were given just a few minutes to pay their respects before being ushered along.
Putin, who made a point of virtually never uttering Navalny’s name aloud, still had not commented on his death as of Sunday. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Friday denounced accusations by world leaders that the Russian president was culpable, calling the allegations “unacceptable.”
Among close friends and associates of Navalny, the reality of his death seemed to still be setting in, but there was also no doubt in their minds who was responsible. Navalny teamed up with Bellingcat, the investigative news group, to prove that a team of FSB agents was responsible for attacking him with a banned nerve agent in 2020. And last week, his associates alleged, the Kremlin finally “finished it” — to use Putin’s phrase.
“Alexei Navalny wanted one very simple thing: for his beloved Russia to be just a NORMAL country,” Navalny’s longtime chief of staff and political adviser, Leonid Volkov, posted on X. “And for this Vladimir Putin killed him. Poisoned, imprisoned, tortured and killed him. Killed is not an exaggeration, not a figure of speech.”
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“You can’t write about Alexei — he ‘died,’” Volkov continued. “This is not death, this is murder. Everything there is covered with cameras in the colony. Every step he took was filmed from all angles all these years. Each employee has a video recorder. For two days — there is not a single video: not leaked, not published. There is no room for uncertainty here.”
With most of the Russian political opposition, like Volkov, in exile, and long jail sentences now meted out for even a flicker of dissent, mass protests following Navalny’s death are virtually unthinkable. And analysts said that despite the emotional end to the bitter, long-running rivalry between Navalny and Putin, Navalny’s death is unlikely to be a turning point.
“Everyone is horrified, of course but this is a certain circle of people,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “They are very few, and it’s clear they can’t make any protests. There is the feeling we are in a police state.”
