And The Flowers Are Gone
“Never forget that Russia is not Putin and Putin is not Russia.”
Banner facing the Russian embassy in Riga, capital of Latvia.
It has now been two weeks since Alexei Navalny was killed in the gulag prison tomb arranged by Putin; two weeks since Russia saw thousands of people lay carpets of flowers that were immediately swept away by the police.
Today, his widow is concerned that police will arrest the mourners at his funeral, which takes place tomorrow (March 1st) in Moscow. That’s what they did following his death, at places like the Solovetsky Stone.
It was in the Solovetsky Islands in the desolate northern White Sea that the emerging Soviet Union built its first camp for political prisoners in 1923. When the Soviet Union fell in 1990, a stone was brought from those Islands to Moscow and put on a plinth inscribed “To the victims of political repression”.
People brought flowers to that stone in the days immediately following the death of Navalny, Russia’s latest victim of political repression.
The police told his mother that he had died of “sudden death syndrome”. That happens a lot around Putin. They told his mother and his wife that his body is being held for examination.
The police didn’t interfere with the crowds in the daylight, at first.
But as night closed in, the first arrests were made.
Late at night, the police also cleared off the flowers.
Putin, so powerful and yet so afraid of Navalny, had to wait for nightfall to clear flowers off a monument, because he could not risk being seen. And Navalny isn’t even alive anymore to stop him.
But Putin certainly doesn’t have a stronghold on the hearts and minds of the people. Putin’s number one fear is dissent from his own people.
Navalny has been critiqued by a few people as being supportive of the invasion of Ukraine. He was initially…but then changed his mind. He condemned the invasion. Some people grow; they are called “leaders”.
News of his death received minimal attention on Russia’s mainstream government-controlled media channels. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state international broadcaster RT, was quick to say that “everyone has long forgotten [Navalny]”. She had covered previous poisonings of Navalny and is thus an expert.
Giving a lie to her assertion, the news in Russia has been all over platforms like X (formerly Twitter) — where it was a top trending topic — and Telegram, an increasingly popular source of news.
Posts on Navalny were among the most viewed on Telegram, garnering hundreds of thousands — sometimes over a million — views, in hours.
Anti-Kremlin activist Bill Browder, CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management and a friend of Navalny, said the death was intended as a message to political opponents. “Well this is happening before the presidential election and I should use that word lightly, they don’t do elections in Russia, it’s the fake election. But Putin has to create the sense of legitimacy and the last thing he wants to do is to have Alexei Navalny saying things from prison that gets people to not support Putin.”
In 2020 in regional elections prominent Navalny allies won deputy seats and stripped Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party of its majority in two cities. In Russia’s third-largest city Novosibirsk, vocal Navalny ally Sergey Boiko won a local council seat and so did several members of his “coalition” of opposition-minded politicians.
In an open election Navalny was a dangerous opponent.
His death will not help Putin…in fact, it will rebound against him, like the invasion of Ukraine has done. Unifying Europe, strengthening Ukraine, destroying the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, eliminating Russian influence around the world — these catastrophes are all directly related to Putin’s Ukrainian decision.
Almost every nation is bending over backward to find a way to stick it to Russia.
Even smaller players like the Czechs have reached into their pockets to supply weapons.
Putin’s only allies are either pariah counties like North Korea and Iran, or deeply distrusted politicians like Donald Trump. Trump’s current excesses are too well known to mention, so we can reach back in time for validation of his superficial narcissism some decades ago.
When the World Trade Centre went down on 9/11, Trump’s reaction was to say that he now had the tallest building in New York.
There was actually another building, 70 Pine Street, that was still taller than Trump’s building…the man can’t even get an appalling boast right.
Then Trump boasted that he had been on the streets during 9/11 removing rumble and helping people out from debris.
In Russia, despite the clearing of the flowers, people are still gathering to pay tribute to a man who has substance, character, honor and value.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, confirmed his funeral will be held at Borisov Cemetery in Moscow’s Maryino district, where Navalny lived. She said the service will take place at 2 p.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God and encouraged mourners to arrive early.
With Navalny’s wife in exile, his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent more than a week on a solitary mission in Siberia to retrieve her son’s body from the authorities. She accused them of “blackmail” by threatening to bury her son without a funeral unless she agreed to “conditions for where, when and how” he should be buried. The Kremlin allegedly insisted on a private funeral with no public presence; the Kremlin has denied her allegations.
His wife Yulia Navalnaya spent a week trying to find a venue for the funeral. Many venues had not been willing to host his funeral.
“I’m not sure yet whether it will be peaceful or whether police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband,” she revealed.
She added that her husband, who spent years documenting corruption in Russia, had shown that Putin is not invulnerable.
She advised Western leaders to pursue Putin’s “friends, associates, the keepers of mafia money. You and all of us must fight the criminal gangs.”
She urged lawmakers to “apply the methods of fighting organized crime” rather than standard “political competition.”
“No diplomatic notes, but investigations into the financial machinations. Not statements of concern, but the search of mafia associates in your countries for discrete lawyers and financiers who are helping Putin and his friends to hide money.”
Yulia said that Putin was “mocking the memory” of her late husband by thwarting attempts to organise a bigger event to honour him.
“People in the Kremlin killed him, then mocked Alexei’s body, then mocked his mother, now they are mocking his memory. We don’t want special treatment for anyone — just to give people a chance to say goodbye to Alexei in a normal way. Just stay out of the way, please.” Navalnaya added that Putin and Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin were responsible for blocking a civil memorial service for the public.
The Kremlin appears to be going to great lengths to prevent Navalny’s funeral from turning into a public display of support.
Today Western officials are coming closer to the diversion of some 300 billion euros ($327 billion) of frozen Russian assets to help repair Ukraine’s war-torn economy.
When he returned to Russia in 2021 after being poisoned, Navalny knew what awaited him: arrest, trials, and years of detention, with the possibility of death. He deliberately chose to act as a fundamental challenger to a regime that would never let him win. By coming back to Russia, he put himself above the moral plane of Putin, and confronted him on the field of morality, rather than politics.
In doing so, he rejected the basic principle on which the Russian system functions: that individuals prioritise their own personal safety over political rights and moral standards.
Yulia Navalny lamented that “My husband will never see what the beautiful Russia of the future will look like. But we must see it. And I will do my best to make his dream come true. The evil will fall and the beautiful future will come,” she said.
Yulia lives in an undisclosed location abroad and said her main aim is to protect her two children from the fallout of her late husband’s political work.
And in Russia the next Navalny is watching this.
The next Navalny has his eyes on Putin.
The next Navalny is coming.
I wonder what kind of flowers Putin likes.
I doubt that any will be spread for him, though, so it doesn’t matter much.
But at that time, when he falls, there will be many more bouquets for Navalny, as grief emerges from government control.
Navalny had helped lead the biggest protests in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people remember.
As his wife said: “Never forget Russia is not Putin and Putin is not Russia.”
Written by Barry Gander
A Canadian from Connecticut: 2 strikes against me! I'm a top writer, looking for the Meaning under the headlines. Follow me on Mastodon @Barry
More from Barry Gander
Trump Weakness Shows
Four in ten Republican voters in the South Carolina primary went for Nikki Haley.
Sweden Joins NATO; Europe Considers ‘Boots On The Ground’
Ends 200 years of neutrality
How Elon Musk Drove Off The Cliff And Now Expects Us To Save Him
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has just warned that Chinese automakers will “demolish” global rivals (read: Tesla) without trade barriers in the US.
“Never forget that Russia is not Putin and Putin is not Russia.” - Yulia Navalny
Thank you, Yulia, and thank you for quoting her, Barry. It wasn't until I read it that I realized I have been guilty of that very thing myself sometimes. My heart goes out to all of the peoples who currently have the misfortune of living within the borders of today's Russia.
How I wish that someone, anyone, would find Stalin's 'pillow'!