The team of the Russian opposition leader stated on Thursday that attempts to rent a hearse to transport Alexey Navalny’s remains to his funeral have been hindered by unidentified individuals. Drivers had allegedly received calls from “unknown people threatening not to take Alexey’s body anywhere,” according to spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. According to Yarmysh, “no hearse agrees to take the body there.”
The opposition leader’s funeral, scheduled for Friday at 2 p.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow’s Maryino neighborhood, proved to be tough for Navalny’s team to arrange. Then, he will be laid to rest in Borisov Cemetery. According to Yarmysh on Tuesday, a number of venues stated they were too busy or declined the booking as soon as Navalny’s name was brought up. One venue even stated outright that they were not allowed to collaborate with Navalny’s team. Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, stated on Wednesday that there were “no available cemetery workers who can dig a grave.” The team had originally scheduled a public farewell and funeral for the late Russian opposition leader on Thursday.
Navalny passed away on February 16 in the Siberian jail colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence. In August, he was found guilty of funding extremist activists, forming an extremist community, and a number of other crimes. He was already serving an 11-and-a-half-year sentence in a maximum security facility for allegations related to fraud, which he consistently disputed and said were driven by politics. Navalny “felt unwell after a walk” in his Siberian prison colony, according to the Russian prison service, and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.
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