In Moscow, people gather to watch the live broadcast of a Berlin memorial concert for the deceased Kremlin opponent Navalny. A short time later, a special police unit arrives.
Police in Russia’s capital Moscow have cracked down on supporters of the late Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny who had gathered for a small memorial service on his birthday. Representatives of a special unit stormed a room in northeast Moscow on Tuesday evening where several dozen people had gathered to watch the live broadcast of a Navalny memorial concert from Berlin, the civil rights organization Ovd-Info said. Around 30 people were detained, searched and questioned in the meantime. The media outlet “Sota” published a short video showing several masked officers approaching.
Navalny, who would have turned 48 on Tuesday, was considered one of the harshest critics of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin during his lifetime and has been a political prisoner since his imprisonment in 2021. Last February, he died in a penal camp in the far north of Russia for reasons that remain unclear. His relatives and supporters are talking about murder – also because Navalny had only narrowly survived a nerve gas attack a few years earlier in the summer of 2020 and was therefore in poor health.
At Navalny’s funeral around three months ago, thousands of people unexpectedly gathered in Moscow, despite great repression, to mourn the popular opposition politician. But otherwise there are hardly any protests anymore because the authorities usually nip them in the bud and immediately arrest participants.