For the second straight day, mourners walked purposefully along Moscow’s snowy Ring Garden on Saturday carrying bouquets to place at one of the makeshift memorials to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian dissident who perished in a prison colony the day before.
The flowers, wrapped in paper to protect them from the freezing wind, were not only a symbol of mourning. They also served as a form of protest in a country where even the mildest dissent can risk detention. And people who laid flowers at the Wall of Sorrow, a memorial to victims of Stalin-era political persecution, shared the belief that the Russian state was behind Mr Navalny’s death.
“He didn’t die, he was killed,” said Alla, 75, a retiree who declined to give her last name because of possible repercussions.
“In theory, we knew they wanted to destroy him,” said her friend Elena, 77, whose hand was entwined with Alla’s. “But when it happened it was such a shock, the senseless brutality of it, just senseless.” She learned what had happened when her daughter and granddaughter called her crying to share the news.
Both women expressed pride that people showed up to voice their disagreement with the state, despite a sweeping crackdown on dissent since Russian President Vladimir V. Putin launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
Some who showed up paid the price. At least 359 people have been detained across Russia since Mr Navalny’s death was announced on Friday, according to the human rights group OVD-Info. Among them was a priest, Father Grigory Mikhnov-Vyatenko, who had been scheduled to hold a memorial service for Mr. Navalny in St. Petersburg.
It is the most significant wave of arrests since the protests against a general mobilization against the war in Ukraine in September 2022.
“They are trying to scare us so much that it is not possible to live,” said Elena, who added that she is worried about the fate of hundreds of other political prisoners in Russia.
Fear prevented Andrei, a 17-year-old in the 11th grade, from buying flowers, but he wanted to come and see what was going on. He bristled when a passer-by mocked mourners and questioned Mr Navalny’s heritage.
“What has he done for our country that deserves our prayers or mourning?” said Sergei, a pensioner who gave only his first name.
“What about smart voting?” Andriy ventured, referring to a system pioneered in 2018 by Mr Navalny’s team that encouraged voters to rally around an opposition candidate, hoping to win over Putin loyalists.
“He was an empty person, just a puppet of the West,” replied Sergei.
As they spoke, dozens of officers observed and interacted with people coming into the compound, and another MAT team stationed near rice paddy wagons watched half a block away. The Wall of Sorrow, in central Moscow, is located on Zakharov Boulevard, named after Andrei Zakharov, the Nobel-winning physicist whose activism was punished by 12 years of internal exile in Gorky, now known as Nizhny Novgorod.
The government used the site to curtail protest movements by making it the only venue allowed whenever public pressure for a march forced a response. Mr Navalny often addressed demonstrations there.
For Olya, 39, the piles of flowers and candles served as a rare but precious reminder that she not alone in wanting a democratic, free Russia without war.
“In a time like this it’s so important to see that there are people who think like me,” she said, as she brought roses to the Wall of Sorrow. Earlier, he said he had laid flowers at the Solovetsky Stone, another memorial to victims of political repression, across the street from the headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB
“And it’s a shame that in a short period of time, people come and go, and you can’t see all the people who came in the course of a day, who are constantly being asked to leave,” he added. “But you can see flowers.”
Protests are effectively banned in Russia, and arrests over the past two days show the extent to which authorities are prepared to suppress public displays of anger or mourning.
“A responsible citizen who loves his homeland, was forced to leave it or tries to the end not to leave it, has only one weapon – a memorial candle,” wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a commentator from Moscow, in an opinion piece. he hopes to publish soon, calling them “the last weapon of a civilized, not savage, man and citizen.”
On Friday, videos began circulating of masked men removing flowers from the Solovetsky Stone, in what was interpreted as a sign that authorities do not want the scale of the outburst of grief to be made public.
Yet, Life continued largely as usual across Moscow, with restaurants and shopping districts bustling with life. And news of Mr Navalny’s death, impromptu memorials and arrests were largely absent from Saturday’s newscasts.
State television channels Rossiya24 and Rossiya-1 instead discussed the Munich Security Conference and the Russian occupation of Avdiivka in Ukraine and presented the “Russia International Exhibit and Forum,” a patriotic fair celebrating food, technology and the culture of each region of the country. .
Russia’s state-run Channel 1 mentioned Mr. Navalny in its newscasts only three times, for about 30 seconds each and without mentioning that he was a politician or even the official reason for his imprisonment.
But for many gathered in Moscow, the memory of the protest will be indelible.
“One day what we’re watching may be in the history books,” whispered Andrei, the student, as police officers ushered him and a New York Times reporter out of the facility. Watching the steady stream of people bearing flowers and under increasing pressure from a policeman to move, he slipped into an underpass with a request.
“Please don’t forget that there are still many good people in this country,” he said.
Neil MacFarquhar Alina Lombzina, Milana Mazaeva and Oleg Matsnev contributed to the report.
