{"id":15732,"date":"2024-02-19T07:53:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T07:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/19\/arrests-vigils-and-kremlin-silence-russia-marks-alexey-navalnys-death\/"},"modified":"2024-02-19T07:53:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T07:53:49","slug":"arrests-vigils-and-kremlin-silence-russia-marks-alexey-navalnys-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/19\/arrests-vigils-and-kremlin-silence-russia-marks-alexey-navalnys-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrests, vigils, and Kremlin silence: Russia marks Alexey Navalny\u2019s death"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The death of Alexey\u00a0Navalny has been met with an outpouring of grief across the world, and even inside Russia \u2013 where the smallest acts of political dissent carry great risk \u2013 people have been honoring his memory. <\/p>\n

Russians have been turning out at makeshift memorials, with hundreds\u00a0reportedly\u00a0detained in the largest wave of arrests at political events in the country in two years. <\/p>\n

In contrast to the public, Russian state media has largely ignored his death. <\/p>\n

Navalny, the\u00a047-year-old fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died on Friday after becoming unwell on a walk at his prison and falling unconscious, according to the Russian prison service. The cause of his death is unclear\u00a0and his team have accused the authorities\u00a0of lying in order to delay the process of returning his body to his family. <\/p>\n

The incident sparked protests worldwide, with many gathering outside Russian embassies in European capital cities including Berlin and Paris, waving banners reading \u201cPutin is a killer\u201d and \u201cPutin to the Hague.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Russia, protests need authorization from government officials. The prosecutor\u2019s office in Moscow warned that any demonstrations in the capital over the death of Navalny were forbidden. <\/p>\n

Still, crowds attended vigils and rallies. At\u00a0events across the country, people paid their respects to Navalny, laying down flowers and carrying posters, social media and news agency videos show. <\/p>\n

Even this, apparently, seemed too much for authorities,\u00a0with video showing\u00a0police carrying\u00a0some attendees into police vans. <\/p>\n

In Moscow, people\u00a0brought\u00a0flowers\u00a0to the Wall of Grief,\u00a0a memorial to the victims of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin, video from\u00a0independent\u00a0outlet SOTA\u2019s\u00a0Telegram channel\u00a0showed. <\/p>\n

About 50\u00a0people\u00a0had gathered at the Wall of Grief\u00a0for\u00a0a rally\u00a0in\u00a0memory of\u00a0Navalny\u00a0Saturday before police began to drive\u00a0people\u00a0away from the monument, the\u00a0independent news outlet Mozhem Obyasnit (MO) reported. <\/p>\n

In\u00a0the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on Friday, police detained\u00a0activists grieving\u00a0for\u00a0Navalny\u00a0and cordoned off the memorial dedicated to the victims of political repression, SOTA reported. <\/p>\n

Since Navalny\u2019s death more than 366 people have been detained, according to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights group that monitors Russian repression. <\/p>\n

More than 200 detentions occurred in St Petersburg alone,\u00a0the\u00a0organization\u00a0said. There were detentions in\u00a032 different cities in total, including\u00a0Murmansk, Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and Nizhny Novgorod.\u00a0OVD-Info reported that some detainees were released, though\u00a0it\u2019s unclear how many. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the hundreds of flowers and candles laid in Moscow were mostly taken away overnight\u00a0on Saturday in black bags, Reuters reported. <\/p>\n

The wave of arrests marks the largest in Russia since September 2022, when there were demonstrations against Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s \u201cpartial mobilization\u201d of reservists\u00a0for his\u00a0war in Ukraine. <\/p>\n

One 36-year-old man who laid a carnation at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, spoke to Reuters from the shelter of an underpass. <\/p>\n

\u201cNavalny\u2019s death is terrible: hopes have been smashed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cNavalny was a very serious man, a brave man and now he is no longer with us. He spoke the truth \u2013 and that was very dangerous because some people didn\u2019t like the truth.\u201d <\/p>\n

Other Muscovites\u2019\u00a0reactions varied.\u00a0One Moscow resident, Alexander, told Reuters he thought Navalny\u2019s death was \u201cexpected.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe news said he was being kept in bad conditions that weren\u2019t fit to live in,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Navalny was jailed after returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. On arrival, Navalny was swiftly arrested on charges he dismissed as politically motivated. <\/p>\n

Navalny has been incarcerated ever since, with longstanding concerns for his welfare\u00a0growing more intense\u00a0after he was transferred to a penal colony\u00a0north of the Arctic Circle. He spent his last weeks in the Siberian prison, where he said he slept under a newspaper for warmth. <\/p>\n

Another Moscow resident, Mikhail, said he believed \u201cenemies\u201d of Russia \u201cshould be dealt with the sooner the better.\u201d <\/p>\n

There have been reports of those detained being beaten. <\/p>\n

OVD-info reported that one young man was detained after laying flowers in Surgut, western Siberia, and told lawyers from the group that he was beaten at the police station. <\/p>\n

He also claimed that officers held a gun to his head, forced him to lie on the floor and stretched his arms up, demanding he confess why he brought the flowers, according to OVD-info. <\/p>\n

MO said there were\u00a0two cases of beatings during arrest, in Moscow and St. Petersburg. <\/p>\n

State media silence<\/h2>\n

Navalny\u2019s death made headlines around the world. <\/p>\n

On\u00a0some of\u00a0Russia\u2019s state media channels, however, reports of Navalny\u2019s death have been scant. <\/p>\n

News channel Russia-24 did not offer any on-air reports\u00a0in the hours after his\u00a0death was announced, nor was it mentioned in the channel\u2019s news ticker. It instead reported on the latest situation in the border town of Belgorod \u2013\u00a0which has seen deadly Ukrainian shelling\u00a0\u2013 and Putin\u2019s visit to the city of Chelyabinsk. <\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Channel One first reported on Navalny\u2019s death at just before 3 p.m. local time, reading out a statement from Russia\u2019s prison services which took 25 seconds of airtime. No image of Navalny was aired. <\/p>\n

A commentator on propaganda channel Soloviev Live claimed that Navalny\u2019s death was orchestrated by the CIA and would be used by the West as ammunition against Russia. <\/p>\n

The claims follow condemnation from Russia\u2019s foreign ministry over the West\u2019s response to Navalny\u2019s death. <\/p>\n

In a statement on social media, Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the\u00a0reaction\u00a0from NATO leaders\u00a0\u2013 many of whom pointed the figure directly at Putin\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\u201creveals their true colours.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no forensic examination yet, but the West\u2019s conclusions are\u00a0already\u00a0ready.\u201d <\/p>\n

None of the media reports offered\u00a0contextual information on Navalny, who posed one of the most serious threats to Putin during his rule, organized\u00a0anti-government street protests\u00a0and used his blog and social media to expose alleged corruption in the Kremlin and in Russian business. The Kremlin has denied the allegations. <\/p>\n

And there has been no comment yet from Putin himself, although that is unsurprising. The Russian leader has consistently refused\u00a0to even name the man\u00a0who became one of his most high-profile opponents. <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The death of Alexey\u00a0Navalny has been met with an outpouring of grief across the world, and even inside Russia \u2013 where the smallest acts of political dissent carry great risk \u2013 people have been honoring his memory. Russians have been turning out at makeshift memorials, with hundreds\u00a0reportedly\u00a0detained in the largest wave of arrests at political <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}