Hundreds of people, including two members of the Russian group Pussy Riot, paid tribute to Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin this Sunday.
Alexei Navalny died on Friday in an Arctic prison where he was serving a 19-year “special regime” prison sentence.
According to German authorities, 250 people took part in the tribute, and the number of participants is estimated by organizers at 450 people.
In addition to Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonikova and Lucy Stein, the tribute included Navalny’s ally Lyubov Sobol and former Russian public television employee Marina Ovsyanikova.
“We call on the international community to show solidarity and defend justice,” Pussy Riot said in a statement published on the Telegram social network.
“The murder of Alexei Navalny and the threats against members of Pussy Riot are attacks on the fundamental values of freedom, justice and human dignity, which we must vigorously defend,” they added.
Participants in a rally in honor of one of Vladimir Putin’s main critics attempted to march from the Russian diplomatic headquarters to the Brandenburg Gate, but were prevented by police.
Navalny has been in prison since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recovering in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Since his arrest, he has received three prison sentences on a number of charges, which he has denied, believing they were in fact politically motivated.
After the latest sentence, which carried a sentence of 19 years in prison, Navalny said he understood that he was “serving a life sentence,” which was measured by the length of his life or the life expectancy of the regime.