Moscow, 17 February 2024 (dpa/MIA) – People across Russia on Saturday were mourning the death of leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, which has sparked outrage around the world, despite facing the threat of arrest.

According to human rights activists, more than 100 people have been arrested across the country following Navalny's reported death on Friday.

More than 60 people have been detained in St Petersburg alone, online outlet ovd.info reported on Saturday morning. Arrests were made in 10 cities, including Moscow, Bryansk and Krasnodar, it said.

In Moscow and other cities, men in civilian clothes or city cleaning staff spontaneously cleared memorials erected for the 47-year-old, who died in prison in Russia's far north.

The circumstances are so far unclear. Navalny collapsed on Friday after a walk in his penal colony in the northern Russian region of Yamal and immediately lost consciousness, according to state news agency TASS citing the prison authorities. Resuscitation attempts by paramedics were unsuccessful, the report added.

Despite the clearing of the memorials, media in many parts of Russia reported on Saturday that people continued to lay fresh flowers, light candles and put up pictures in memory of Navalny.

The civil rights activists also gave legal advice on laying flowers and published a phone number for legal help.

Many Russians publicly expressed their anger after Navalny's death.

"How great even the power apparatus's fear of a dead man is, when even laying flowers in his memory is considered a crime," wrote Dmitry Muratov, Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the anti-Kremlin newspaper Novaya Gazeta, on Telegram on Saturday.

Human rights activists as well as Navalny's team are accusing the authorities of having killed the Kremlin critic. A laywer is currently on his way to the prison in northern Russia, according to Navalny's team.

Navalny was serving a total sentence of 19 years on several charges, including one of "extremism." However, abroad he was widely seen as a political prisoner, with human rights organizations repeatedly calling for his release.

In 2020, he narrowly survived an attempt on his life with the nerve agent Novichok, before being flown to Berlin, where he underwent emergency treatment. Navalny returned to Russia on January 17, 2021 and was arrested on arrival at the airport.

In December last year, he disappeared from where he was being held in the European part of Russia, before being located in a penal colony in northern Siberia some weeks later.

Photo: EPA