For the second day in a row, mourners walked purposefully alongside Moscow’s snow-heaped Backyard Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets to put at one of many improvised memorials to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition determine who perished in a jail colony the day earlier than.
The flowers, wrapped in paper to protect them from the icy wind, weren’t solely an emblem of mourning. In addition they served as a type of protest in a rustic the place even the mildest dissent can threat detention. And the individuals who laid bouquets on the Wall of Grief, a monument to the victims of political persecution in the course of the Stalin period, shared the conviction that the Russian state was behind Mr. Navalny’s demise.
“He didn’t die, he was killed,” stated Alla, 75, a pensioner who declined to present her final title due to potential repercussions.
“Theoretically, we knew that they needed to destroy him,” stated her buddy Elena, 77, whose arm was interlaced with Alla’s. “However when it occurred it was such a shock, the mindless brutality of it, simply mindless.” She discovered what had occurred when her daughter and granddaughter known as her in tears to share the information.