Alexei Navalny's team and family are unable to obtain a room for the public farewell to the opponent, said today his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, who yesterday launched an appeal for a space to be made available.
“We called most of the private and public funeral agencies, commercial sites and funeral halls,” Yarmysh wrote on X. “Somewhere they say the room is occupied. Somewhere they refuse to mention the name Navalny. In one place we were told directly that funeral homes were prohibited from working with us.”
The dissident Leonid Volkov, a friend and collaborator of Navalny, said he was convinced that a protest called for March 17, the final day of the Russian presidential elections, would be the "last testament" of the opponent who died in prison.
But the Kremlin's official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called the calls for protest actions in Navalny's name "provocative", claiming that they are
"calls to violate the laws" and threatened "legal consequences" for "those who somehow they react to these calls."
As for the possibility - raised by Maria Pevchikh, director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation - that the final stage of negotiations had been reached to obtain the release of the dissident and two American citizens detained in Russia in exchange for the release of Vadim Krasikov in Germany - a Russian intelligence agent in prison for murder - Peskov limited himself to saying: "I don't know anything about it, I don't have any information about it."
According to a Russian source cited by Reuters, however, Navalny would have given his consent to return to freedom in a possible exchange of
prisoners scheduled for mid-February between Russia and Western countries and his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, would also have given your consent to the possible exchange.
The same source also claims that billionaire Roman Abramovich would have been involved in the talks.
“Initially the plan was for an exchange involving only” Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, arrested
in Russia on espionage charges, “and Abramovich had discussed it with Putin. The only person Putin was ready to exchange him with was Krasikov But the Germans were categorically against it, because it was an American problem. When Navalny appeared under this plan, the Germans finally agreed."
Again according to the Reuters source, "everything was finally confirmed when" German Chancellor Olaf "Scholz traveled to the United States" for talks at the White House on February 9.
According to another Reuters source "close to the Kremlin", Russia and the West had agreed in principle to make an exchange involving Navalny and Gershkovich, but the precise details of such an agreement had yet to be worked out.
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