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A woman was arrested in Saint Petersburg after she laid flowers at a memorial to victims of political repression
Photo: Uncredited / dpa
The death of opposition activist Alexei Navalny has also caused horror in Russia. In several cities, people spontaneously gathered and laid flowers for Navalny
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even though they know that they are putting themselves in extreme danger: the security authorities have been cracking down on any movement of resistance, especially since the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine. People mostly chose monuments to victims of the political repression under Stalin as places to express their mourning.
The civil rights organization OWD-Info reports on mourning events in eight cities, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar, Tver, Taganrog, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don and Murmansk. In all cities the police took action against the grieving people; the organization writes that 102 people were arrested. According to media reports, journalists were among those arrested.
In Moscow, there was a large police presence in the city center well into the night, as a reporter from the dpa news agency reported from on site. The police cordoned off the “Wall of Mourning,” a monument to the victims of the Stalin dictatorship, as an eyewitness reported to SPIEGEL.
In the center near the FSB headquarters, people lined up to place flowers at the so-called Solovetsky Stone, dedicated to victims of political repression. Many were allowed through to the stone, but were intimidated by police officers and constantly warned to leave the place quickly.
The BBC has published video footage of a spontaneous action in memory of Alexei Navalny in Saint Petersburg on X. There people gathered at the monument to the victims of political repression, and after a while the arrests began. The video also shows this.
According to official information, Navalny died at the age of 47 in a prison camp in the far north of Russia. The death of the opposition politician, who returned to Russia in 2021 after a poison attack despite the threat of imprisonment, caused consternation in many countries. Politicians accused Putin and the Russian justice system of political murder.
Especially since the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine around two years ago, Russia's power apparatus has taken harsh and repressive action against dissidents in its own country. Most recently, women's protests calling for their husbands to return from the war were broken up. That's why there are hardly any major protests anymore.
heb/mgo/dpa