by For the second day in a row, mourners walked resolutely along Moscow’s snow-covered Garden Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets of flowers to lay at one of the makeshift monuments to Aleksei A. Navalny, the figure of the Russian opposition who died in a penal colony the day before.
The flowers, wrapped in paper to protect them from the icy wind, were not just a symbol of mourning. They also served as a form of protest in a country where even the slightest dissent can risk arrest. And the people who laid bouquets at the Wall of Sorrow, a monument to victims of political persecution during the Stalin era, shared the conviction that the Russian state was behind Navalny’s death.
“He didn’t die, they killed him,” said Alla, 75, a pensioner who declined to give her last name because of possible repercussions.
“In theory, we knew they wanted to destroy it,” said her friend Elena, 77, whose arm was linked with Alla’s. “But when it happened it was a huge shock, the senseless brutality of it all, just senseless.” She found out what happened when her daughter and granddaughter called her crying to tell her the news.
Both women expressed pride that people showed up to express their disagreement with the state, despite a widespread crackdown on dissent since Russian President Vladimir V. Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
Announcing Navalny’s death on Friday, Russia’s prison service said he suddenly felt unwell during a walk and that the causes were being “determined.” A lawyer for Navalny said “additional histology” had been performed on the body to determine the cause of his death and its results should be ready next week.
Some who attended the memorial gatherings paid the price. At least 400 people have been detained across Russia since Navalny’s death was announced on Friday, according to the human rights group OVD-Info. Among them was a priest, Father Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko, who was scheduled to hold a memorial service for Navalny in St. Petersburg.
This is the largest series of arrests since protests against a general mobilization over the war in Ukraine in September 2022.
“They try to scare us so much that it is not possible to live,” Elena said, adding that she was worried about the fate of hundreds of other political prisoners in Russia.
Fear prevented Andrei, a 17-year-old 11th grader, from buying flowers, but he wanted to come and see what was happening. He became enraged when a passerby mocked mourners and questioned Navalny’s legacy.
“What did he do for our country that deserves our prayers or mourning?” said Sergei, a pensioner who also gave only his first name.
“What about smart voting?” Andrei ventured, referring to a system started in 2018 by Navalny’s team that encouraged voters to rally around an opposition candidate, hoping to overtake Putin loyalists.
“He was an empty person, just a puppet of the West,” Sergei responded.
As they spoke, dozens of police officers watched and interacted with people arriving at the complex, and another group of riot police stationed near the rice carts watched a half-block away. The Wall of Pain in central Moscow is on Sakharov Avenue, named after Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose activism was punished with years of internal exile in Gorky, now known as Nizhny Novgorod.
The government has used the site to contain protest movements, making it the only permitted location whenever public pressure for a march has forced a response. Navalny frequently addressed protests there.
For Olya, 39, the piles of flowers and candles served as a rare but valuable reminder that she is not the only one who wants a democratic, free, war-free Russia.
“At a time like this, it is very important to see that there are people who think like me,” she said, while bringing roses to the Wall of Pain. Earlier, he said that he had laid flowers at the Solovetsky Stone, another monument to victims of political repression, in front of the headquarters of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB.
“And it’s a shame that in a short period of time, people come and go, and you can’t see all the people who came throughout the day, who are constantly asked to leave,” he added. “But you can see flowers.”
Protests are effectively banned in Russia, and the arrests over the past two days show the extent to which authorities are willing to crack down on public displays of anger or mourning.
“A responsible citizen who loves his homeland, was forced to leave it, or tries to the end not to leave it, has only one weapon: a memorial candle,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based commentator, wrote in an opinion piece he published. he hopes to publish soon, calling them “the last weapon of a civilized, not savage, person and citizen.”
Videos began circulating on Friday of men with their faces covered removing flowers from the Solovetsky Stone, in what was interpreted as a sign that authorities do not want the scale of the pain to become public.
Still, life went on normally in Moscow, with restaurants and shopping districts bustling with activity. And news of Navalny’s death, makeshift memorials and arrests were largely absent from Saturday’s newscasts.
Instead, state television channels Rossiya24 and Rossiya-1 discussed the Munich Security Conference and the Russian capture of Avdiivka in Ukraine, and presented the “Russian International Exhibition and Forum,” a patriotic display celebrating food, technology and culture of each of the regions of the country. .
Russia’s state-controlled Channel 1 mentioned Navalny in its news bulletins only three times, for about 30 seconds each, and without mentioning that he was a politician or even the official reason for his imprisonment.
But for many gathered in Moscow, the memory of the protest will be indelible.
“Someday what we are seeing may appear in the history books,” Andrei, the student, whispered as the police urged him and a New York Times journalist to leave the premises. Watching the steady stream of people carrying flowers, and under increasing pressure from a police officer to move on, he slipped into an underground crosswalk with a request.
“Please don’t forget that there are still many good people in this country,” he said.
Neil MacFarquhar Alina Lobzina, Milana Mazaeva and Oleg Matsnev contributed reports.
