‘A necessary evil’

Navalny’s mother’s resolve was the deciding factor in the Russian authorities’ decision to allow a funeral, Meduza’s sources say

While its long-term impact on Russian politics remains to be seen, the vast number of people who showed up for Alexey Navalny’s funeral left little doubt that a sizable contingent of Russians sympathize with the country’s opposition. It was fear of this kind of outpouring of support that led the authorities to do everything they could to prevent the public memorial from happening — from threatening Navalny’s mother to prohibiting venues from hosting the event. The Kremlin clearly hoped that Navalny’s funeral would resemble that of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose plane crash death two months after he launched an insurrection against the Russian military was followed by a clandestine burial in St. Petersburg. Ultimately, however, the unwavering resolve of Navalny’s mother, who publicly insisted the authorities release her son’s body with no strings attached, forced the Kremlin to back down. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev spoke with inside sources about what was happening in the Putin administration during the standoff.

The Kremlin, unsurprisingly, wanted Alexey Navalny’s funeral to be as quiet an affair as possible. The firm resistance of the politician’s family and the publicity campaign led by his associates and supporters, however, forced them to conclude that a public ceremony for Navalny would be a “necessary evil,” according to a source close to the Putin administration’s political team. A second source familiar with the situation in the Kremlin confirmed this account.

In the authorities’ ideal scenario, Navalny’s funeral would have looked similar to the one held for Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023. Prigozhin, who died when his private jet crashed in Russia’s Tver region on August 23, was buried in St. Petersburg’s Porokhovskoye Cemetery in the presence of his family, without the military honors he was entitled to as a “Hero of Russia.” The location of the ceremony wasn’t disclosed to journalists in advance, and the press service for Prigozhin’s Concord company reported the funeral only after the fact.

Russian state media, citing its own source, reported that Prigozhin’s ceremony was kept private “at the family’s request.” According to sources who spoke to The Moscow Times, however, the decision to close the funeral to the public came not from Prigozhin’s relatives but from the heads of Russia’s security agencies and the Kremlin’s political team. “Prigozhin, with his calls for justice and his sharp and often true statements, stirred up Russians’ emotions and became not an official hero of Russia but a kind of folk hero. And do we need heroes who march on Moscow? No,” a government official told the outlet.

Meduza’s sources close to the Kremlin, however, refused to say that the authorities feared the public show of support Navalny’s funeral would bring. “Prigozhin was on the up-and-up, his approval rating was rising, he was amassing a following — and he’d broken every possible rule [by launching an insurrection in June 2023],” said one source. “Navalny isn’t a very relevant politician right now,” he claimed. “Although it was clear that people would come [to his funeral]. Lines of people supporting the opposition was the last message they wanted to send during Putin’s election campaign.”

The Kremlin quickly realized it wouldn’t be able to strike a deal with Navalny’s relatives the way it had with Prigozhin’s family, to whom it gave some of the mercenary leader’s assets, two sources close to the Russian government told Meduza. So instead of seeking a compromise, the authorities decided to try to use blackmail and intimidation to achieve their goal.

For nine days after Navalny’s death, investigators refused to hand over his body to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, insisting that she first agree to hold his funeral in secret. According to Navalnaya, on February 22, she spent nearly 24 hours in the Russian Investigative Committee office in the town where her son’s body was being held. For the first half of the day, her lawyer wasn’t allowed to join her. Meanwhile, Navalny’s associates were leading a global media campaign to demand the authorities release the body. Finally, on February 24, Navalny’s press secretary reported that the authorities had agreed to release the body with no strings attached.

“Pressuring [the family] didn’t work, so they chose the option that would have predictable consequences [for the Kremlin’s image] but wouldn’t be catastrophic. Refusing to let an elderly mother bury her son would have been a blow to the [Kremlin’s] image, even in the eyes of loyal people,” a source close to the Russian government told Meduza.

But Navalny’s family continued to face obstacles all the way up until the day of the funeral itself. They were unable to find a venue willing to host a civil funeral for the opposition leader and ended up having to hold a small ceremony in a church instead. Numerous funeral agencies refused to provide them with a hearse, and the ceremony itself was cut short, presumably under pressure from the authorities.

Despite these hurdles, Navalny’s funeral and subsequent burial ceremony became the country’s largest street protest since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine (the Russian authorities have effectively banned all protest rallies).

According to Meduza’s sources, the Kremlin did not expect so many people to show up to Navalny’s funeral. There are no reliable figures on the exact number of Russians who went to the cemetery to pay their respects, but the number is at least in the tens of thousands and could reach the hundreds of thousands (mourners continued to line up to visit Navalny’s grave for two days after his funeral). And that doesn’t include events honoring Navalny in other cities across Russia, where people brought flowers and candles to makeshift memorials and to monuments honoring the victims of political repressions.

One source close to the Kremlin told Meduza that the long lines at the Borisovskoye Cemetery came as a “surprise to the authorities,” though he said the crowd was still “very small” for Moscow. Even during Russia’s safest periods for protests, however, the largest street rallies drew little more than 100,000 people — and the country’s pro-government rallies, which citizens are bribed or forced to attend, rarely have this many attendees.

“Also, we’re talking about a goodbye, about the past,” said the source. “Prigozhin was on the rise — he symbolized the future [to the authorities]. People were coming [to bid farewell to Navalny], leaving flowers. They’ll keep doing this. But overall, there’s little danger [to the Kremlin] here.”

Since Navalny’s death, Russian pro-government media and Telegram channels have been spreading distorted and false information about the opposition leader’s family. This disinformation campaign continued even throughout the day of Navalny’s funeral. Outlets like Kommersant, for example, noted that Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and his children, Dasha and Zakhar, were “not seen at the funeral,” but failed to provide the context that the family would face major security risks if they traveled to Russia. Before the funeral, multiple Telegram channels shared a fabricated audio recording in which a voice resembling that of Navalny’s mother accused Yulia Navalnaya of exploiting her son’s name, as well as allegations that Navalnaya had had an affair.

Two political strategists who work with the Putin administration’s political team characterized these attacks as “risk management efforts.” “She [Yulia Navalnaya] could become the leader of a major segment of the opposition. So that has to be counteracted,” one of them said.

Both sources maintained that despite these attempts to damage her reputation, Navalnaya does not currently pose a threat to the Kremlin. Another political strategist who works with the Kremlin, however, said that the rise in activity among Navalny’s followers after his death has created a risk for the authorities. According to him, Russia has “people who are clearly dissatisfied with the government and who are capable of action.” These same people, he said, “stood in line for [barred presidential candidate and anti-war politician Boris] Nadezhdin.” He continued:

There are people who wanted to say goodbye [to Navalny] but who didn’t go — there are certainly more of them. And nobody [in the Kremlin] is even trying to talk to these people. This was the same thing that led to the protests on Bolotnaya Square.

A source close to the Putin administration said that security officials “may, for prevention purposes, visit protest participants who are identified from surveillance cameras,” adding that only “people who were active” at the funeral are at risk of this, “not people who just stood there with flowers.” On March 5, the first reports of police visits to people who attended Navalny’s funeral appeared in the media. “There’s no opposition [to these preventative visits among Putin administration members]. And anyway, who would object? That would be suicide,” he said. “Although it would be better for all of this [Navalny’s death and funeral] to be forgotten about and left behind as soon as possible.”

Reporting by Andrey Pertsev. Translation by Sam Breazeale.