A priest who was planning to hold a memorial service for Navalny at the Solovetsky Stone was detained in St. Petersburg

Priest Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko was detained in St. Petersburg, writes his wife, human rights activist Natalya Sivokhina. He was going to hold a memorial service for Alexei Navalny at the Solovetsky Stone. The Russian Orthodox Church stated that Mikhnov-Vaitenko had nothing to do with them and asked to ignore his statements.

After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mikhnov-Vaitenko and his wife helped Ukrainian refugees in St. Petersburg. The priest regularly went to protests and supported political prisoners: historian Yuri Dmitriev, convicted in the Network case, Margarita Yudina, who was hit in the stomach by a policeman at a rally.

Despite the detention of Mikhnov-Vaitenko, the funeral service for Navalny took place, writes “Paper”. It was conducted by a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church. After it ended, according to the publication, security forces forced people out of the square and detained at least seven people.

Those wishing to honor Navalny's memory are also detained in other Russian cities. Thus, in Yekaterinburg, a local resident was detained who came to lay flowers at the “Masks of Sorrow” memorial to victims of political repression, . It’s My City reports The detainee's wife said that the man was kept in the car for half an hour and then taken to the police station. According to her, the police explained the detention by “mining the site.”

OVD-Info writes that the police are planning to fence off the memorial with tape and call sappers. They dispersed local residents who came to lay flowers in memory of Navalny and declared that the monument was closed.

RusNews correspondent Ksenia Starikova was detained in Chelyabinsk. She filmed a man who destroyed a spontaneous memorial in memory of Navalny, and also filmed on his phone those who came to honor the memory of the politician.

“What are you filming? Are you drowning for Navalny? Why are you drowning for him? What do you have the right to?” the man who destroyed the memorial told Old Man. After this, the journalist and three other people were detained by police.

In Samara, security forces detained Regina Yashina, who came to lay flowers at the monument to political prisoners in the park named after Yuri Gagarin. And in Novosibirsk - two girls who were smoking near the monument to victims of political repression.

In addition, in Tomsk, Kursk, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Novocherkassk, police, as reported by OVD-Info, are copying down the details of people who lay flowers.

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