Floral tributes to Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe who died on Friday in a Russian penal colony, were removed overnight by groups of unidentified people while police watched, videos on Russian social media show.
More than 100 people were detained in eight cities across Russia after they came to lay flowers in memory of Navalny, said OVD-Info, a group that monitors political repression in Russia.
Yesterday, police blocked access to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and detained several people there as well as in another Siberian city, Surgut, OVD-Info said.
Photo: AP
Video footage shared on social media from Novosibirsk showed people sticking red flowers upright in the snow under the watchful eye of police who blocked access to the memorial with ticker tape.
Images on social media showed dozens lining up on Friday to place flowers at monuments to victims of political repression in the cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
“I’m afraid. Afraid of what will happen next. Afraid of what the state can do with its citizens,” 18-year-old student Mark said in the capital.
Photo: AP
In Moscow, flowers were removed overnight from a memorial near the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service by a large group while police looked on, a video showed, but by morning more flowers had appeared.
Navalny supporters also turned out across Europe and in the US to pay tribute to the man widely acknowledged as Russia’s main opposition figure, even when he was behind bars.
Navalny’s death was announced earlier in the day by officials in the Arctic prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence.
Photo: EPA-EFE
From New York and Washington to cities in western Europe and capitals of former Soviet bloc states, mourners showed their respect for Navalny, a charismatic lawyer who rallied domestic opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Many were quick to blame Navalny’s death on Putin.
“Putin murderer. Putin to the Hague,” shouted a crowd massed in front of Russia’s embassy in Berlin.
Most of the several hundred people gathered there were Russian speakers, many holding up posters of members of the opposition or slogans criticizing Putin.
“It’s a hard hit emotionally,” said Evgueni Syrokin, who coordinates the “FreeNavalny” movement in Germany.
“It pushes us to continue to work, to struggle against Putin,” added the 43-year-old, bearing a black and white photograph of the opposition figure.
Behind him, flowers, candles and photos of Navalny were laid on the pavement.
In Warsaw, about 100 people demonstrated outside the Russian embassy. Most were young and visibly upset.
One 29-year-old Russian who only wanted to be identified as Denislan said he saw Navalny as a symbol of Russian civil society.
“I am here because Russia should and can become a democratic country,” he said.
Candles and flowers were spread out in front of the gates of the well-guarded embassy.
In Switzerland, about 300 people attended an impromptu gathering outside Zurich’s train station, while more than 100 gathered in front of the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, carrying portraits of Navalny and white flowers.
The shock announcement of Navalny’s death came a day before official campaigning starts in what critics say will be a stage-managed presidential election next month that will extend 71-year-old Putin’s two-decade hold on power.
In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, crowds gathered at a memorial to victims of the Soviet occupation.
“Even in prison he managed to find the force and give it to those who resist,” said one Russian resident of Vilnius who did not want to give his name.
Hundreds also gathered in the capitals of Armenia, France, Georgia and the Netherlands.
Across the ocean in New York, people laid flowers outside Russia’s consulate and hung photos of Navalny on the gates. Several hundred people, some bearing posters and candles, also gathered in front of the Russian embassy in Washington, chanting “We are Navalny” and “Shame on Putin.”
The words “Putin murderer” were projected on to the embassy building.
US President Joe Biden on Friday blamed Putin for the death of Navalny, describing the Kremlin critic as a “powerful voice for the truth.”
Saying he was “outraged” by the news, Biden said he did not yet know exactly what had happened to Navalny, but that it was the fault of Putin and his “thugs.”
“Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible,” Biden said in televised remarks from the White House.
“What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled.”
Biden said he was “looking at options” on how to respond, but did not elaborate.
Additional reporting by Reuters
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system. The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph. However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b. Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun. The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind
RSS