Police in Russia have detained a lot more than 100 men and women throughout the place at memorials and rallies to honour opposition chief Alexey Navalny, who the authorities say died in a distant penal colony.

On Saturday, the OVD-Data protest checking team explained a lot more than 110 individuals experienced been arrested, which includes 64 in Saint Petersburg.

The federal jail provider stated that Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died on Friday right after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony the place he was serving a 19-year sentence, prompting an outpouring of grief and shock amid his supporters across the earth and condemnation from planet leaders.

As information of his loss of life spread, spontaneous memorials took put in many urban areas, with people taken into custody in 13 metropolitan areas, according to OVD-Info, which tracks political repression in Russia.

Eleven men and women were being detained in the funds, Moscow, and several others in the metropolitan areas of Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don and Tver, it extra.

The hundreds of bouquets and candles laid in Moscow on Friday for Navalny, a distinguished critic of President Vladimir Putin, had been mostly taken away overnight in black baggage. A several dozen roses and carnations remained in the snow on Saturday at the monument to the victims of Soviet repression, which sits in the shadow of the previous KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in central Moscow.

Movies and pictures shared on Russian social media also showed flowers becoming cleared from monuments to victims of Soviet-period repression throughout the country.

Protests are unlawful in Russia less than demanding anti-dissent legislation, and the authorities have clamped down significantly harshly on rallies in guidance of Navalny.

Authorities in the cash reported on Friday they ended up informed of phone calls on line “to take section in a mass rally in the centre of Moscow” and warned people from attending.

On a bridge beside the Kremlin exactly where opposition chief and previous key minister Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on February 27, 2015, flowers ended up also taken out overnight.

A makeshift vase of white and purple carnations remained with a modest printed piece of paper. “Boris Nemtsov was shot in the again and murdered right here,” the note stated.

On Saturday, law enforcement blocked obtain to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and detained various people today there as nicely as in yet another Siberian town, Surgut, OVD-Data stated.

Video shared on social media from Novosibirsk confirmed men and women sticking purple bouquets in the snow as police blocked entry to the memorial with tape.

Putin’s ties with West

Navalny’s demise – which will come much less than a thirty day period just before a presidential election that is sure to return Putin to one more six decades in energy – will have very little effect on the success, explained Alexey Muraviev, professor of strategic research at Curtin University.

“Navalny did not have any important political bodyweight in Russia. He had an military of supporters but compared to the general proportion of the Russian conservative voters they had been, and continue to stay, a minority,” Muraviev informed Al Jazeera.

In its place, Muraviev included, this could damage the Russian president’s try to re-build a dialogue with the West with the renewed concentration on his repressive regime.

United States President Joe Biden claimed Navalny “bravely stood up to the corruption, the violence and all the lousy factors the Putin authorities were being undertaking,” introducing that “Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death”.

European Council President Charles Michel reported the Russian dissident “fought for the values of flexibility and democracy” and produced the final sacrifice.

“The EU holds the Russian routine for sole dependable for this tragic demise,” he said.

Australia’s Overseas Minister Penny Wong on Saturday reported Navalny’s “heroic opposition to Putin’s repressive and unjust regime inspired the world”.

Wong posted on X: “We hold the Russian Federal government only dependable for his cure and demise in jail.”

The Kremlin – which has not commented on Navalny’s dying – has described Western leaders’ reactions as “absolutely unacceptable” and “hysterical”.

China’s international ministry declined to comment on Saturday describing it as “Russia’s inside affair”, the AFP news agency described.

Navalny had been jailed given that January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to experience specific arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He was later on convicted 3 periods, declaring every case was politically motivated, and gained a sentence of 19 yrs for extremism.

Following the last verdict, Navalny stated he recognized he was “serving a existence sentence, which is measured by the length of my everyday living or the length of lifestyle of this regime”.

Several hours immediately after Navalny’s dying was described, his spouse, Yulia Navalnaya, resolved the Munich Stability Meeting in Germany exactly where a lot of leaders experienced gathered.

“If this is true, I want Putin and everyone all-around Putin, Putin’s buddies, his governing administration to know that they will bear obligation for what they did to our nation, to my family and to my partner. And this working day will occur really quickly,” she said.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was travelling to the prison colony the place he died, accompanied by his attorney, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper noted on Saturday.