Russia Detains Navalny Mourners

People around the world—including Russians in dozens of cities and world leaders at a conference in Germany—paid tribute Sunday to Alexei Navalny. The Russian opposition leader's death at age 47, while detained in a penal colony, was announced Friday. The government detained some of the mourners, the AP reports. The global reaction included:

• Russia: People took flowers and candles to ad hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repression over the weekend. By Sunday evening, a rights group reported, more than 300 of them had been detained. In St. Petersburg, Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, was arrested after announcing plans for a memorial service for Navalny on social media. He was charged with organizing a rally and put in a holding cell in a police precinct but later hospitalized with a stroke, OVD-Info rights group said. "Navalny's death is terrible: hopes have been smashed," one mourner told Reuters.
• Berlin: Members of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot demonstrated outside the Russian Embassy, holding banners that read "murderers" in English and Russian. Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the members, told the AP that she doesn't believe the political opposition's cause is lost. "It seems to me that with (the death of) Navalny it wasn't the hope that died, but rather responsibility was born," Tolokonnikova said.
• Romania: Dozens of people lit candles and placed flowers at a portrait of Navalny outside the Russian Embassy in Bucharest on Sunday. Several held placards reading, "You don't win free elections by murdering the opposition."
• London: Protesters projected a huge image of Navalny onto the facade of the Russian embassy, per the New York Times.
• Yulia Navalnaya: The late leader's wife published a picture Sunday of the couple on Instagram, her first social media post since her husband's death. "I love you," the caption read. She spoke Friday at the Munich Security Conference.

• Munich: Gathered before Navalny's death was announced, "world leaders were left hushed and hollow-eyed, their annual security conference suddenly transformed into a wake," the Times reports. Analysts said governments are killing dissidents when they used to merely imprison them, partly because the US and other Western countries don't join together in opposition the way they did decades ago. "It's a marker that tells us how the world has changed," said British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands. A human rights campaigner, William Browder, said Navalny's death might make US lawmakers less willing to be seen as accommodating Russian President Vladimir Putin, possibly breaking the GOP holdup on aid to Ukraine.
• Senator's stance: On the other hand, an American opponent of continued aid to Ukraine went to the conference to state his case. "We simply do not have manufacturing capacity to support a ground war in Eastern Europe indefinitely," Republican Sen. JD Vance said, per Politico Europe. The Trump ally said the death of Navalny doesn't alter that reality. "It's hard not to admire him, " he added, "but I don't think it really changes the underlying dynamics,"

(More Alexei Navalny stories.)