MOSCOW ¨C For the second day in a row, mourners walked purposefully along Moscow¡¯s snow-heaped Garden Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets to lay at one of the improvised memorials to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who perished in a prison colony the day before.
The flowers, wrapped in paper to shield them from the icy wind, were not only a symbol of mourning. They also served as a form of protest in a country where even the mildest dissent can risk detention. And the people who laid bouquets at the Wall of Grief, a monument to the victims of political persecution during the Josef Stalin era, shared the conviction that the Russian state was behind Navalny¡¯s death.
¡°He didn¡¯t die, he was killed,¡± said Alla, 75, a pensioner who declined to give her last name because of possible repercussions.
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