“At one point, they directly told us that funeral agencies are prohibited from cooperating with us,” the spokeswoman said. According to her, his associates have been trying to find a place to say goodbye to Navalny since Monday, calling most funeral services, halls and suitable commercial places. “After 24 hours of searching, there are no spaces for a final farewell,” she added.
A day earlier, on the same platform, Jarmyšová wrote that Navalny’s associates are looking for a hall for a public farewell at the end of this working week. At the same time, some members of the late Kremlin critic’s team denied rumors of a February 29 funeral, calling them false. “All reliable information will be on my twitter,” said Jarmyšová, referring to the older name of the X network.
Navalny is expected to be buried in one of Moscow’s cemeteries, but the date and location of the burial have not yet been announced, Meduza noted. RFE/RL recalls that since the oppositionist’s death, Russian authorities have detained hundreds of people across the country who have been commemorating Navalny by, for example, laying flowers at various places, such as memorials to victims of political repression.
According to an official report, Navalny died suddenly on February 16 in a penal colony in Siberia. Authorities released the body to his mother on February 24, according to media reports. Until then, they refused to hand him over, claiming that the investigation into the cause of death was ongoing. According to Navalny’s associates, representatives of the investigative committee demanded of Lyudmila Navalny before releasing her son’s remains, to agree to a secret burial without a public farewell. Navalná refused to fulfill the demands, wrote Meduza. Meanwhile, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to this website, that the Kremlin did not put any pressure on Navalny’s mother in connection with the funeral.
Navalny has been the main face of the Russian opposition for years and has been a vocal critic of Putin’s regime, primarily for corruption. Since 2021, he has been in prison, successively serving sentences of 2.5 years, nine years and 19 years in prison. He denied guilt and attributed his imprisonment to the regime’s efforts to silence all opponents and criticism. Last December, the authorities transferred him to a facility in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Siberia. The Russian opposition and a number of Western representatives attribute the blame for Navalny’s death to Putin. The Kremlin denied that the state was involved in his death.
