Russians line the streets for Navalny
Large crowds of mourners gathered outside the church ahead of the funeral service for Navalny in Moscow this morning.
Where is the funeral being held?
The Kremlin, or at least those acting on the Kremlin’s behalf, spent the past few weeks attempting to derail the funeral, Navalny’s team has said. Several Moscow churches declined to hold the service, they said, and they struggled to find a hearse willing to carry his body.
One venue finally did agree, the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in the south of Moscow near where Navalny once lived.
The service is due to begin shortly and mourners will travel to the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery for the burial around 8 a.m. ET. The event is also being live-streamed.
Despite Navalny being a staunch critic of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the church where his funeral service will be held has donated to the Russian army and enthusiastically advertised its backing for the conflict. This is in line with the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has introduced a special prayer for Russian victory in Ukraine and expelled priests who pray instead for peace.
Navalny’s parents arrive at funeral
The Russian opposition leader’s parents, Anatoly Navalny, right, and Lyudmila Navalnaya, are attending the funeral after his mother fought to retrieve his body from authorities.
Western diplomats arrive with flowers
A handful of Russia-based Western diplomats are also at the funeral. Among them are U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy and French Ambassador Pierre Levy, pictured holding flowers outside the church.
WATCH: Crowds applaud and chant as Navalny’s hearse arrives
A crowd of mourners chanted as the hearse carrying Navalny’s coffin arrived at the Moscow church this morning.
Hearse arrives at church to applause, shouts of ‘Navalny!’
The hearse carrying Navalny’s body has arrived at the church, where it was met by applause and repeated shouts of “Navalny! Navalny! Navalny!” from crowds gathered there.
More than 1,000 people have gathered outside the church, more than will be allowed in to see the coffin, his team says.
“Now we will need some time to prepare for the funeral service. Relatives will come in first,” Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on social media.
People at the scene are also heard shouting, “You weren’t scared, we aren’t scared!”
Navalny funeral the latest sign of dangers faced by those in the Kremlin’s sights
The more than 1,000 people who organizers say are attending today’s funeral are taking an immense risk. The Kremlin told Russians this morning not to attend unauthorized gatherings that it said were ‘illegal.’
Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, is very unlikely to attend her husband’s funeral because of the threat of arrest, since she herself has refused to be silenced.
Underscoring the danger is the uncertain fate of another couple. The funeral comes a day after Russian American citizen Ksenia Karelina lost her appeal against imprisonment. She is accused of treason for donating just $51 to a Ukrainian charity.
“She’s innocent. She is a normal person,’ her boyfriend, Chris Van Heeren, told NBC News from Los Angeles yesterday. He says those jailed for treason in Russia face terrible conditions. “They get to shower once a week, which is painful. They get a book once a week to read. They get porridge to eat.”
All the same, he says, she wrote him a love letter from prison. “She said, ‘I’ve got a little window in my cell, and I can see the sun and I know that I look at the same sun as you’.”
Funeral live stream tops 200,000 viewers
With not long to go until the funeral, more than 200,000 people are watching a live stream of the event posted by Navalny’s team on YouTube.
More than 1,000 people outside the church, Navalny team says
Despite the threat of a police crackdown, encouragement from Navalny’s team for mourners to pay their respects appears to have been heard.
“Come see Alexei Navalny off on his last journey if you are in Moscow,” Navalny’s chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, wrote on social media before the event.
Around an hour before the funeral was due to begin, there were already 1,000 people outside the church in southern Moscow where Navalny’s coffin will be taken, Volkov said on the YouTube live stream being broadcast by his team.
They were joined by a heavy police presence, including teams perched on roofs along the route between the church and the cemetery, a map of which Volkov posted on X.
He said there were so many people that, due to the church’s limited capacity, not all of them would be allowed inside to pay their respects to the coffin.
Navalny’s farewell and funeral to be held in Moscow
Police have been on patrol since early this morning outside the church in Moscow where a farewell ceremony for Navalny is expected to be held.
Morgue is delaying release of Navalny’s body, his team says
After delays in receiving his body after his death, and problems finding a venue for his funeral, Navalny’s team now says that the morgue has not yet released the Russian opposition leader’s body at the agreed time on the day of his funeral.
“Relatives arrived at the morgue at 10 a.m. (2 a.m. ET), when Alexei’s body was supposed to be given to them,” his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on social media, but “the body has not yet been released.”
“The schedule has not changed yet, but there may be delays,” she added.
Navalny’s chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, said of the delay, “I have no understanding at all by now what these a——s are trying to achieve.”
Navalny’s team says it still can’t find a hearse to carry him
Just hours before the funeral is scheduled to begin, Navalny’s team says it has still been unable to find a hearse to carry his body because of threats against the drivers by “unknown people.”
“At first we were not allowed to rent a funeral hall to say goodbye to Alexei,” his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on social media.
“Now, when just a funeral service is supposed to take place in the church, Ritual agents tell us that not a single hearse agrees to take the body there,” she added, referring to Ritual, Russia’s main funeral service. “Unknown people call all teams and threaten them not to take Alexei’s body anywhere.”
It appears that Navalny’s team has been able to find a hearse to carry his body to the church, and that after a short delay his body has been handed over to his family.
“Alexei’s body is being handed over to his relatives, and the hearse with it will soon head to the temple,” his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on social media.
Heavy police presence outside the church where Navalny’s funeral will be held
Riot police officers have assembled near the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows in Moscow this morning. Barriers have also been set up at the site.
Navalny allies say the Kremlin has tried to derail the funeral
The Kremlin, or at least those acting on the Kremlin’s behalf, has been attempting to derail the funeral, Navalny’s team has said, by blocking their preferred date because it clashed with Putin’s state of the nation address yesterday.
Even then, several Moscow churches declined to hold the service, his team said, and still hours beforehand, they were unable to find a hearse willing to carry his body.
Navalny’s wife has blamed Putin for her husband’s death, alleging that he was poisoned on Putin’s orders with the nerve agent Novichok and that his body was held until traces of the poison had disappeared. The Kremlin has denied the accusation of poisoning.
Even after his death, “they abused his body and abused his mother,” Yulia Navalnaya said this week, in an apparent reference to claims by her mother-in-law, Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, that officials had tried to blackmail her by insisting on a quiet, nonpublic funeral while holding the body for so long that it started to decompose.
The body was eventually returned last weekend.
Russian opposition leader to be buried in Moscow event that has become a new flashpoint
The funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is due to be held this morning, an event seen by many worldwide as representing a struggle between the country’s marginalized protest movement and President Vladimir Putin’s will to silence it.
Navalny, who died Feb. 16 aged 47 in an Arctic penal colony, was the most prominent dissenting voice in Putin’s Russia, where government critics are jailed or exiled, protest is effectively banned and the press is shackled. Navalny’s team say he died from poisoning ordered by Putin, which the Russian government denies.
Navalny’s funeral could become a flashpoint between mourners and police trying to quash any expression of anti-Putin dissent in his memory, according to Navalny’s family and team. Already, around 400 people have been arrested for laying flowers at Navalny’s memorials across Russia, the human rights group OVD-Info said.
“I am not sure yet whether it will be peaceful or the police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband,” Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said in a speech to the European Parliament this week.
