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Hundreds of people gathered outside a church in south-eastern Moscow where Alexei Navalny is to be buried ahead of the Russian opposition leader’s funeral on Friday.
Navalny, Russia’s most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, died in February in a remote Arctic prison colony at the age of 47.
His widow Yulia Navalnaya and exiled team have accused Putin of ordering his murder to scupper his release in a prisoner exchange.
The Kremlin has dismissed the allegations, while investigators in charge of the inquest claimed Navalny died of natural causes.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin had nothing to say to Navalny’s relatives and declined to comment on his political stature, according to state newswire RIA Novosti.
Peskov said anyone who protested at the funeral would face a police crackdown. “We have to remind you there is a law and it needs to be observed — any unsanctioned gatherings will be against the law. So anyone who takes part in them will be held responsible under the law,” he said.
Footage on social media showed a heavy police presence outside the church amid what Navalny’s team has said is a Kremlin-directed attempt to limit public shows of support.
Police arrested about 400 people who left flowers at monuments to Soviet political prisoners following Navalny’s death.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has said officials in northern Russia refused to hand over his body for a week and threatened to let it rot unless she agreed to bury him in secret.
After authorities released his body, Navalny’s team said funeral agencies refused to hold a wake for him or provide a hearse after receiving anonymous threats.
Navalny’s memorial service is to be held at the Soothe My Sorrows church in Marino, the neighbourhood where he lived for many years before he was poisoned with the nerve agent novichok in 2020. He will then be buried in the nearby Borisovsky cemetery.
After recovering from the poisoning in Berlin, Navalny was arrested immediately when he returned to Moscow in 2021, and was sentenced to decades in prison on a series of charges ranging from tax evasion to extremism.
Russia banned his foundation, which prompted most of his followers to flee the country, jailed the few prominent supporters who stayed, then in effect outlawed all dissent when Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Kremlin then gradually moved to isolate Navalny from the outside world, forcing him to spend 27 stints in a punishment cell that he said amounted to torture and arresting three of his lawyers.
