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Wagner mercenary supporters are stealing flowers laid in memory of Putin’s fiercest critic Alexei Navalny and placing them on their former leader’s grave.
The tributes are being moved to honour former Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, 62, who was killed in a suspected assassination plane crash last year.
Thousands have quietly honoured Navalny, 47, who mysteriously died two weeks ago in the Arctic penal colony he was sent to for speaking out against the Kremlin.
But men who laid flowers at the memorial stone for victims of Russian repression have been reported to local military enlistment offices and could be sent to the war.
More than 100 people have been detained across eight cities after leaving tributes, according to OVD-Info, a group which monitors political repression in Russia.
Footage shows war blogger and Wagner supporter Natalya Khim, 35, a former TV reality show star, saying: ‘I’ve heard about people laying flowers to a stone at Lubyanka Square to commemorate Alexei Navalny.
‘We know he died – but we are not mourning.
‘Myself together with Wagner private army’s mercenaries and other participants of the Special Military Operation [war against Ukraine] made a joint decision that no flowers will stay here.
Police detain a man as he wanted to lay flowers paying their last respect to Alexei Navalny (Picture: AP)
Footage also shows ‘Wagner-backer’ dressed in black, his face covered, moving flowers from the Navalny shrine to a Wagner stall (Picture: social media/ East2west news)
People flashlight at a spontaneous memorial in memory of the deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (Picture: Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/Shutt)
‘From now on all flowers [in memory of Navalny] will be collected and moved to the memorial dedicated to the heroes of the Special Military Operation [war].’
Khim was a member of a Russian neo-Nazi organisation called ‘Slavic Union’ who rebooted herself as a pro-war blogger.
She said: ‘God forbid if even one dog tries to come to our memorial and take something from there.’
Footage also shows ‘Wagner-backer’ dressed in black, his face covered, moving flowers from the Navalny shrine to a Wagner stall.
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Police officers detain a man laying flowers to Alexei Navalny at the Memorial to Victims of Political Repression in St. Petersburg (Picture: AP)
The body of Navalny has only just been handed back to his mother last week, an aide has said.
Lyudmila Navalnya was facing threats and blackmail from Putin’s regime to bury her son in secret with no public farewell.
His widow Yulia Navalnaya accused a ‘demonic’ Vladimir Putin of ‘torturing’ her late husband’s corpse by holding it ‘hostage’.
The Russian authorities say Navalny died of natural causes.
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