The police presence appeared heavy for the service. Some attendees shouted, “No to war” & “#Russia will be free” as they marched to the cemetery where the opposition leader was to be buried.
A photograph taken inside the church & shown on #Navalny’s YouTube channel showed him in an open coffin, lying in repose w/flowers over his body. His parents held lit candles. His widow, #YuliaNavalnaya, who has vowed to carry on his #political activities, & his children, Daria & Zakhar, who no longer
live in #Russia, did not appear to be present.
Outside the church, people chanted, “Thank you, Aleksei” & “Love is stronger than fear.”…next to the cemetery, mourners cried out, “peace for #Ukraine —freedom for #Russia!” Mourners who came w/in sight of #Navalny’s mother said “thank you for your son!” One observer, …journalist Elena Milashina, said in a post that she believed “tens of thousands” of people had assembled….
~3:15PM, videos showed the crowd tossing flowers onto the road as the #funeral cortège left the church for the cemetery.
Almost 270k people were watching a livestream of the event… while ~150k watched coverage on YouTube….
The #Navalny team accused #Russia authorities of trying to prevent people from sharing photos & videos of the scene. Mikhail Klimaryov, dir of a Russian internet freedom group, the Internet Protection Society, said his group’s data showed that cellphone service in the area had been reduced to the lower-bandwidth 3G standard & described it as a “mobile shutdown.”
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