Navalny funeral service set In Moscow for March 1
A funeral service for the late opposition politician Aleksei Navalny will be held on March 1 at a church in the Maryino area of Moscow, where the Kremlin critic once lived, after several days of uncertainty marked by claims by his mother that she was being blackmailed by officials into holding a secret commemoration, RFE reports.
Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on February 28 that after the service, Navalny will be buried at the nearby Borisovskoye cemetery.
The announcement comes a day after Navalny's associates said they were having trouble finding a location for the service, which will take place two weeks after the anti-corruption crusader was pronounced dead by officials at the Arctic prison where he was incarcerated.
Navalny's body was released to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, on February 24, more than a week after his suspicious death in prison. The official death certificate said the 47-year-old died of "natural causes." Officials have not commented further.
Before the body was released, Navalnaya said the authorities were setting conditions on where, when, and how her son should be buried.
"They want it to do it secretly without a mourning ceremony," she said, adding that investigators threatened to bury her son at the prison where he died unless she agreed to bury him without a farewell ceremony.
Russian media reports on February 27 said that police briefly detained on unspecified charges Navalny's former lawyer, Vasily Dubkov, who represented his family after his death and accompanied Lyudmila Navalnaya on her trip to the so-called "Polar Wolf" prison to get Navalny's body.
