Thousands Attend Navalny's Moscow Funeral Under Heavy Police Presence

Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bade farewell Friday to opposition leader Alexei Navalny  at his funeral in Moscow after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony .

Navalny was buried at a cemetery in the snowy southeastern outskirts of the capital after a short Russian Orthodox ceremony, with vast crowds waiting outside the church and then streaming to the fresh grave of President Vladimir Putins fiercest critic with flowers and anti-government chants.

Although riot police set up barricades at both the church and cemetery, no detentions were reported.

Navalnys widow, Yulia,  who was not seen at the funeral, thanked him for 26 years of absolute happiness.

I dont know how to live without you, but I will try to do it in a way that you up there are proud of me and happy for me, she wrote on Instagram.

The service followed a battle with authorities over the release of his body. His team said several Moscow churches refused to hold the funeral for the man who crusaded against official corruption and organized massive protests. Many Western leaders blamed the death on the Russian leader , an accusation the Kremlin angrily rejected.

Navalnys team eventually got permission from the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, which was surrounded by crowd-control barriers.

As his coffin was removed from the hearse and taken inside the church, the crowd waiting outside broke into respectful applause and then chanted: Navalny! Navalny! Some also shouted, You werent afraid, neither are we! and later No to war! Russia without Putin! and Russia will be free!

Western diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, were among those who attended, along with presidential hopefuls Boris Nadezhdin  and Yekaterina Duntsova . Both wanted to run against Putin in the upcoming presidential elections and opposed his war in Ukraine; neither was allowed on the ballot.

Images from inside the church showed an open casket with Navalnys body covered with red and white flowers, and his parents, Lyudmila and Anatoly, sitting beside it.

Navalnys closest associates live outside Russia and made comments in a livestream of the funeral on his YouTube channel, their voices occasionally cracking with emotion.

Those people who follow what is happening, it is of course obvious to them that this man is a hero of our country, whom we will not forget, said Nadezhda Ivanova of Kaliningrad, who was outside the church with other supporters. What was done to him is incredibly difficult to accept and get through it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those gathering in Moscow and other places not to break the law, saying any unauthorized (mass) gatherings are violations.

After the short church service, thousands marched to the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery, where the police were also out in force.

With the casket open, Navalnys mother and father stroked and kissed his head. A large crowd gathered at the cemeterys gates, chanting: Let us in to say goodbye!

The coffin was then lowered into the ground. In keeping with his irreverent sense of humor, music from the The Terminator 2 was played, a movie his allies said he considered the best in the world.

Mourners streamed by his open grave, tossing handfuls of soil onto the coffin as a large crowd waited at the cemeterys entrance. As dusk fell, workers shoveled dirt into the grave while Lyudmila Navalnaya watched. A mound of flowers, funeral wreaths, candles and a portrait of Navalny sat nearby.

She had spent eight days trying to get authorities to release her sons body  following his Feb. 16 death at Penal Colony No. 3 in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Even on Friday, the morgue where the body was being held delayed its release, according to Ivan Zhdanov, Navalnys close ally and director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Authorities originally said they couldnt turn over the body because they needed to conduct post-mortem tests. Navalnaya made a video appeal  to Putin to release it so she could bury her son with dignity.

Russian authorities still havent announced the cause of death for Navalny, who was 47. His team cited paperwork Lyudmila Navalnaya saw that listed natural causes.

At least one funeral director said he had been forbidden to work with Navalnys supporters, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on social media. They also struggled to find a hearse.

Unknown people are calling up people and threatening them not to take Alexeis body anywhere, Yarmysh said Thursday.

Navalny had been jailed since January 2021 , when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

His Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were designated as extremist organizations by the Russian government that same year.

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

We dont want any special treatment just to give people the opportunity to say farewell to Alexei in a normal way, she wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Moscow authorities refused permission for a separate memorial event for Navalny and slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Friday, citing COVID-19 restrictions, according to former presidential hopeful Duntsova. 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 Feb. 27, 2015.

Yarmysh also urged Navalnys supporters around the world to lay flowers  in his honor Friday.

Everyone who knew Alexei says what a cheerful, courageous and honest person he was, Yarmysh said 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.

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More AP coverage of Alexei Navalny: https://apnews.com/hub/alexei-navalny