As of: February 22, 2024, 10:12 a.m
By: Kathrin Braun
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RUSSIA POLITICS NAVALNY TRIBUTE © NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA
After Navalny's death, the situation in Russia is getting worse.
Hundreds of mourners are arrested.
Putin's actions reveal his fear of rebellion.
Munich – As an older woman was laying a few roses in the snow, a police officer approached her.
“If you put flowers here, you have to gather back there at the intersection,” he said.
This is addressed to all people standing in front of the famous Wall of Mourning in Moscow.
The police take down their personal details.
There are a lot of pictures of this circulating online.
Emergency services drag mourners away and carry them by their hands and feet into police cars.
People are pushed face down to the ground.
In one video, a group of people chanted "shame" until police intervened and punched a man in the face.
The Wall of Mourning in Moscow is intended to commemorate the victims of Stalinist terror, but these days it is a symbol of Putin's oppression: people are crying there for Alexei Navalny because they no longer believe the Kremlin's stories.
Because they are sure that the Russian president murdered his greatest political opponent - even if Russian media claim that he died of a blood clot.
Across the country, Russians lay bouquets of flowers;
a form of protest that is actually so gentle, but which apparently causes great unrest among the Russian government: since Navalny's death was reported on Friday, at least 400 people have been arrested in Russia, reports the human rights group OVD-Info.
Did Putin want to send a signal to the Munich Siko?
“The traitor Putin is turning people into slaves,” an older woman in St. Petersburg dares to shout in front of cameras.
She is upset.
Then she calls on the people around her to resist.
“Why don’t we stand up and tell him to get lost?”
It's images like these that give many people hope these days: that Navalny's death could have opened the eyes of Russia's citizens.
The whole of world politics has been talking about it since Friday, and the sadness for the Kremlin critic hung like a shadow over the Munich Security Conference - especially after the memorable appearance of his wife Yulia, who called for a common fight against the Russian regime on stage.
Many participants believe that Putin did not choose the timing by chance: even without his presence, the president managed to remain the main topic of the world's most important forum for security policy.
Arrest of a mourner © Screenshot/X.com
“It was murder without a doubt,” says Zhanna Nemtsova, journalist and daughter of dissident Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in 2015, on stage.
She is certain: When a government kills its opponents, it is a sign of weakness.
“This could also have something to do with Nadezhdin's sudden success: the number of his supporters has frightened the Kremlin.” The opposition Boris Nadezhdin recently submitted more than 100,000 signatures to the electoral commission in order to be allowed to run in the presidential election in March.
The authority rejected his candidacy.
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Navalny's message before his death: "Don't do nothing, don't give up"
Nemtsova says the government did not expect the response - apparently more and more Russians have had enough of the war and enough of Russian politics.
That's why Putin decided to eliminate Navalny as the face of the resistance.
“Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone who could take his place,” says the Russian exile.
Russia's dissidents are now without their idol.
Navalny was prepared for this eventuality.
“If they decided to kill me, that means we are particularly strong at this moment,” he said in a documentary years ago.
He gave the Russian people a wish: “Don’t do nothing, don’t give up.”