MOSCOW — Alexei Navalny will be buried at a cemetery in Moscow on Friday, a spokesperson has confirmed.

The service will be held at Borisovskoye Cemetery, after a farewell ceremony in the Maryino district.

On Tuesday the opposition leader's spokeswoman said that his team was struggling to find a funeral home - with some refusing to hold the service when they found out who it was for.

Alexei Navalny suddenly died in an Arctic prison earlier this month.

For years, he was the most high-profile critic of Vladimir Putin. Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, as well as several world leaders, have directly blamed the Russian president for his death.

Navalny's team had originally wanted to hold the funeral on 29 February, but "it quickly became clear that there was not a single person around who could dig a grave on that day", Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X.

Zhdanov implied that the reason for this was that Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to make his yearly address to the Federal Assembly on the same day.

"The Kremlin understands that nobody will care for Putin and his address on the day of Alexei's farewell," he wrote.

He also encouraged people to arrive early "to have a chance to say goodbye to Alexei". — BBC