Laura Gozzi
Europe reporter

Alexei Navalny will be buried at a cemetery in Moscow on Friday, a spokesperson has confirmed.

The service will be held at Borisovskoye Cemetery, after a farewell ceremony in the Maryino district.

On Tuesday the opposition leader's spokeswoman said that his team was struggling to find a funeral home - with some refusing to hold the service when they found out who it was for.

Navalny's team had originally wanted to hold the funeral on 29 February, but "it quickly became clear that there was not a single person around who could dig a grave on that day", Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X, external.

Zhdanov implied that the reason for this was that Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to make his yearly address to the Federal Assembly on the same day.

"The Kremlin understands that nobody will care for Putin and his address on the day of Alexei's farewell," he wrote.

A lawyer for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison earlier this month, was briefly detained in Moscow on Tuesday.

Russian media said Vasily Dubkov was held for "violating public order".

Russian officials have not confirmed that he was arrested nor the reason why. But Dubkov told news outlet Verstka he was freed later on that day.

Dubkov accompanied Navalny's mother to the Arctic prison colony where he died on 16 February.

In October 2023, other lawyers for Navalny - Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Aleksei Lipster - were arrested on charges of "extremism".

In 2021, Russian authorities banned the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the organisation led by Navalny, for "extremism".

Laura Gozzi
Europe reporter

Since her husband Alexei died on 16 February, Yulia Navalnaya has been unstoppable.

On the very same day his death was announced, she addressed the Munich Security Conference.

Days later, she attended a foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, before flying to the US to meet President Joe Biden.

Today, she will speak to European MEPs.

All the while, she has been posting videos on social media, clearly sending the message she is picking up the baton for her husband, and positioning herself as a reference point for those who feel bereft at the loss of Alexei Navalny.

Navalnaya has appeared combative and determined. But during her public appearances her voice has also often been shaking with grief and fury.

Last week, she posted a photo on Instagram with her daughter, Daria, 23, who lives in the US, writing: "My sweet girl. I flew over to hug you and comfort you, and you're the one comforting me. You are so strong, brave and resilient... It's so good to have you here."

It was a reminder that, away from the meeting rooms of Berlin, Washington and Brussels, Navalny's death is also a personal tragedy for his family.

Image source, EPA

Yulia Navalnaya was born in Moscow in 1976, the daughter of respected scientist Boris Ambrosimov.

An economics graduate, she had a career in banking but gave up her job to bring up their two children when Alexei rose to prominence as an opposition politician.

They met on holiday in Turkey in 1998 and married two years later.

Navalnaya kept a low profile for much of their relationship, insisting that her main role was as a wife and mother not a politician.

She was, however, thrust into the limelight following Navalny's poisoning in 2020 when she became a de-facto spokeswoman for her husband.

She has been described as the "First Lady" of the Russian opposition and Navalny himself said he could not continue his fight against the Kremlin without her.

Following his death, she delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference, where she appealed for justice for her husband's death and vowed to continue his work to fight for a "free Russia".

Alexei Navalny was a political activist and perhaps Putin’s most famous critic.

For more than a decade, he exposed corruption at the heart of Russian power and his video investigations received tens of millions of views online.

A charismatic campaigner, Navalny set up a network of regional campaign offices, having planned to run for president in 2018, but was barred from the vote.

In 2020, he was poisoned in Siberia by what Western laboratories later confirmed to be a nerve agent.

He was treated abroad but then returned to Russia in January 2021, whereupon he was immediately arrested and then jailed on politically-motivated charges.

He died on 16 February in prison in Siberia, where he was being held in harsh conditions on a lengthy prison sentence.

Image source, Reuters

Barbara Tasch
Live reporter

Good morning and thank you for joining us.

In the next hour, Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s widow, is set to address the European Parliament to talk about the situation of political prisoners in Russia.

Navalny, a leading opposition figure in Russia and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, died in the Siberian penal colony he was being held in on 16 February.

Navalnaya has been urging Western leaders to seek justice for her husband's death and has has vowed to continue his work to fight for a "free Russia".

The European Parliament will also discuss threats to the international rules-based order and the need to reinforce the EU’s security and defence.

Stay with us as we bring you the latest lines, analysis and reaction.