Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation director details nighttime meeting over politician’s final resting place

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, spoke with Meduza about the process Navalny’s associates had to go through to finalize his burial place.

"Yesterday we found [Moscow’s] Nikolo-Arkhangelskoye Crematorium as a hall for the [funeral]. It’s inconvenient, outside the Moscow Ring Road, but still, they told us they’re available and can sign a contract. We got a call from the cemetery, already from the municipal funeral enterprise “Ritual,” and they said: ‘We know that you’ve got an agreement with the Nikolo-Arkhangelskoye Crematorium. Come over, we’ll take care of all the organization,’” Zhdanov told Meduza.

When a Navalny associate arrived, he was told he could come to the Khovanskoye Cemetery at night and sign a contract.

He goes there — they hand him a paper saying they’re offering a funeral hall at the Northern Khovanskoye Cemetery. He says, ‘But I came to sign a contract for that cemetery, at the Nikolo-Arkhangelskoye Crematorium.’ They told him, ‘Yes, but it’s already booked, there’ll be no service there.’

On Wednesday, Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh announced that the politician’s funeral will be held at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Assuage My Sorrow” in Moscow’s Maryino District at 2:00 p.m. on March 1.