A public funeral for late opposition activist Alexei Navalny will be held Friday afternoon at a church in southeastern Moscow, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh announced on social media Wednesday.
The funeral service will take place at a Russian Orthodox church in Moscow’s Maryino district, where Navalny had lived with his wife and two children before being poisoned in 2020 and then arrested following his return to Russia the following year.
“Come early. The burial will be held at the Borisov cemetery,” Yarmysh wrote on X (formerly Twitter), referring to a cemetery in the same district.
Navalny’s allies said earlier this week that they planned to hold a public farewell for him after Russian investigators handed over his body to his mother, more than a week after he died at an Arctic penal colony.
The late activist’s team accused the authorities of trying to prevent a public funeral from taking place as it could turn into a show of support for Navalny’s movement and his opposition to President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny’s top aide Ivan Zhdanov said the team initially planned to hold the ceremony on Thursday but claimed that every funeral home in Moscow had refused because of Putin’s scheduled address to the Russian parliament that day.
Zhdanov also accused the authorities of intervening to keep Navalny’s family from booking a larger venue for a public memorial service.
“The devils came out again with their humiliation of Alexei even when he’s gone,” he wrote on social media.
