Floral tributes to opposition leader Alexei Navalny pulled down and mourners detained in Russian cities
Floral tributes to Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, who died Friday in a Russian penal colony, were removed overnight by groups of unidentified people while police watched, videos on Russian social media show.
Floral tributes to Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, who died Friday in a Russian penal colony, were removed overnight by groups of unidentified people while police watched, videos on Russian social media show.
More than 100 people were detained in eight cities across Russia after they came to lay flowers in memory of Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political repression in Russia. On Saturday, police blocked access to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and detained several people there as well as in another Siberian city, Surgut, OVD-Info said.
Video shared on social media from Novosibirsk showed people sticking red flowers upright in the snow under the watchful eye of police who blocked access to the memorial with ticker tape.
In Moscow, flowers were removed overnight from a memorial near the headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service by a large group while police looked on, a video showed. But by morning more flowers had appeared.
The news of Navalny’s death comes less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power.
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