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This is where he will find his final “rest”: Alexei Navalny will be buried on Friday at the Borisovskoye Cemetery.

A small cemetery in the Moscow suburb of Marino, where Navalny used to live.

But the authorities put obstacles in the way of the family of Russia's best-known opposition figure until after his death.

For example, Navalny's employees had been searching for days without success for a space for a memorial service in the Russian capital.

And the family had actually wanted a grave in the cemetery where the shot opposition figure and Navalny's friend Boris Nemtsov is also buried, near the gravesites of Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev.

But the authorities rejected the suggestion that the cemetery was "unsuitable."

For Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya, the culprit for all the harassment and her husband's death is clear: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a moving speech to the EU Parliament, she summed it up like this:

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalny:


“On his orders, Alexei was tortured for three years.

He was left to starve in a tiny stone cell, cut off from the outside world, denied visits, telephone calls and even letters.

And then they killed him.

And even after that they abused his body and his mother.”

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of the dead opposition figure, expressly wished in a video message that the people who were affected by her son's death had the opportunity to say goodbye to him.

For days, near the penal camp in the Arctic Circle where Navalny was imprisoned and died, she had to insist that the body be handed over to her.

Navalny's wife fears that the burial at the Borisovskoye cemetery will not go smoothly either.

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalny:


"The funeral will take place the day after tomorrow and I'm not yet sure whether it will be peaceful or whether the police will arrest those who came to say goodbye to my husband."