A portrait of Alexey Navalny is left outside the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, Romania, to mark the first anniversary of his death, 16 February 2025. Photo: EPA-EFE / ROBERT GHEMENT

Family, friends and associates paid tribute to slain Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny on Wednesday, on what would have been his 49th birthday.

Writing on Instagram, Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya, who vowed to continue his work when he was murdered in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024, said not a day went by where she did not miss him, and described him as “the best person in the world”, “A person who knew the value of freedom. A person who truly loved. A person who lived the way everyone wants to live, with vigour and courage.”

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, went to Moscow’s Borisovsky Cemetery to lay flowers at his grave, independent Telegram channel SOTAvision reported, adding that national guardsmen had been deployed to check the bags and even the bunches of flowers being left by the graveside by those paying their respects.

The parents of exiled opposition politician Ilya Yashin also visited the grave, according to SOTAvision. Yashin, who lives in Germany since being exchanged in a mass prisoner swap between Russia and the West in August, himself posted a tribute to Navalny, which ended with an assertion that Navalny supporters had “no right to give up”.

The Team Navalny Telegram channel also posted tributes from other Russian public figures, including Maria Pevchikh, the head of investigations at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, as well as from close associates Leonid Volkov and Liliya Chanysheva and others, and announced that The Pet Shop Boys, long known for their ties to Russia, would headline a concert in Navalny’s memory in Berlin on 28 June.

Navalny died in a penal colony in Russia’s Arctic Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district in February 2024 at the age of 47. The Federal Penitentiary Service has always maintained that he collapsed after feeling ill while taking a walk, but he is widely believed to have been murdered by the Russian state.