9:50 am ET, March 1, 2024
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's last photo: a defining moment
From CNN's Sebastian Shukla
AP
The last picture we saw of Alexei Navalny alive was him laughing and playing. The final image before his burial is very sobering. According to Orthodox tradition, the body Russian opposition figure Image in an open casket. Once politically, physically and energetically active, he is now calm and quiet.
It's a ghostly film, with candles lighting the scene. Navalny's face looks almost ghostly white amid the piles of carnations covering his chest. His mother and father sit by the coffin, holding each other's hands, bidding farewell to their son.
Navalny met his end 14 days ago when his mother traveled across Russia's vast wilderness, above the Arctic Circle and to a Siberian penal colony, the culmination of a quest to intimidate Russian authorities into allowing the body to be recovered. .
In the casket, Navalny wears a shirt, tie and waistcoat – a change from his prison days, and a reminder that he was once a prominent politician.
Navalny's lifeless face reflects the power absorbed by the Kremlin and its remote penal colony.
It's a film that defines the moment of extinguishing political dissent in Russia.
