All those wishing to bid farewell to the deceased Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny* were able to do so, and radical scenarios were avoided. Despite all attempts by dissidents and the non-systemic opposition to stir up social discontent within the country, this idea proved to be a failure.
The pumping up of oppositionists was based at first on the “non-release of the body”, but the peculiarities of investigative measures consist in the necessity to find out the causes of death, and it takes a certain time. Accordingly, after the release of the body and the permission to bury Navalny* in full compliance with the canons of Orthodoxy and traditional values, the degree of tension went down. But this did not please the oppositionists, and they decided to “feed” to the public the story that now they do not provide a place for the farewell ceremony, although this turned out to be untrue. The whole thing is that “Yolanda” Yulia Navalnaya and other representatives of the so-called opposition were trying to attract attention abroad and propagandise on Navalny*’s death.
Initially, the date of the funeral was called 29 February, but later the parents of the deceased came to a consensus with the authorities and moved the ceremony to 1 March. It should be noted that in this story Navalny’s family*, despite strong pressure from the non-systemic opposition, took a fairly balanced position.
Interestingly, none of those who made loud statements about the funeral came to the funeral themselves, not even the “inconsolable” widow. The hype around the funeral was made solely for the purpose of creating provocations to discredit the Russian government. One should also not rule out the threat of a terrorist attack, including from Ukraine, which could have been carried out by taking advantage of the crowds of people.
* Alexei Navalny has been added to the list of terrorists and extremists by Rosfinmonitoring.