The Russian leader got rid of something he didn’t want around….
But?
Aleksei A. Navalny does not leave quietly….
Even in Vladimir Putin’s Russia…..
Thousands of people crowded a neighborhood on Moscow’s outskirts on Friday — some bearing flowers and chanting, “No to war!” — as they tried to catch a glimpse of the funeral for Aleksei A. Navalny. The outpouring turned the opposition leader’s last rites into a striking display of dissent in Russia at a time of deep repression.
The service took place under tight monitoring from the Russian authorities, who have arrested hundreds of mourners at memorial sites since Mr. Navalny died. The police presence was heavy around the church where funeral services began shortly after 2 p.m. local time.
After a procession to the cemetery, Mr. Navalny’s coffin was placed next to his freshly dug grave. Video live streamed from the site showed his family members and then other mourners kissing him goodbye for the last time. Then his face was covered with a white cloth and the coffin was lowered to the Frank Sinatra song “My Way” and then the final song from “Terminator 2,” which Mr. Navalny considered “the best film on Earth.” Mourners slowly passed by, each taking a handful of dirt and tossing it into the grave.
People had chanted Mr. Navalny’s last name earlier as his coffin was taken into the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, a Russian Orthodox church in southern Moscow. Images on social media showed attendees lining up, but also security cameras that the local news media reported had been recently installed, and signs forbidding mourners to take pictures or video in the church….
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“This was the most optimistic funeral I can remember,” said Ms. Milashina, 47, citing the large crowds and a palpable sense of unity. “There was no grief. There was this surge of inspiration that we are all together, and that there are many of us.”
The funeral of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny on Friday may come to be remembered as a seminal moment in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. It was a day when the president’s decades-long nemesis was laid to rest, underlining Mr. Putin’s dominance; but it was also a day when an ocean of pent-up dissent re-emerged, if only for a few hours, on Moscow’s streets.
The hope for a better Russia “died the day that we all learned that they killed Navalny,” Ms. Milashina said. “But today, I felt — you could really see it — that it was resurrected.”
Mr. Navalny spent his last three years in prison, under increasingly inhumane conditions. But many opposition-minded Russians still saw him as their Nelson Mandela, poised to someday ascend as the leader of a democratic Russia….
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Mr. Navalny’s supporters, in turn, feared large-scale arrests. Hundreds of mourners were detained across Russia at makeshift memorials to Mr. Navalny in the days after he died. But on Friday, the Russian authorities largely let the funeral run its course, perhaps calculating that they were better off avoiding scenes of police violence.
“Everyone was ready to be detained,” Ms. Milashina said. “Everyone was a bit surprised that no one was detaining them.”
But most of all, she said, people were surprised at the size of the turnout
They tossed their flowers at Mr. Navalny’s passing hearse. Footage from the scene showed them chanting “No to war!” and “Peace for Ukraine, freedom for Russia!”
Another chant was “Hi, it’s Navalny” — the opposition leader’s catchphrase at the beginning of his popular YouTube videos. The message seemed to be that Mr. Navalny’s movement would live on, even with its leader’s passing….
image…Thousands of mourners turned out for the funeral of Alexei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, in the Maryino district of Moscow on Friday.Credit…Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty