Navalny’s funeral will take place on Friday, spokeswoman said

Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s opposition leader, will be buried on Friday after a funeral service in Moscow that will be open to the public, his spokeswoman said on Wednesday, raising the possibility of a rare display of opposition sentiment in the Russian capital. .

“Come early,” said the spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on social media. But mourners will still take a risk by attending. Hundreds of people who came to spontaneous memorials for Mr. Navalny across Russia after his death were arrested, according to OVD-Info, a Russia-based rights group that tracks arrests.

Since Russian authorities reported Mr. Navalny’s death on February 16, his aides have said the Kremlin has tried to prevent a funeral for him in Moscow, which could draw thousands of mourners and become a flashpoint for dissent. At one point, his team says, authorities in the Arctic, where Navalny died in a penal colony, threatened to bury him on prison grounds if his mother did not agree to a private funeral. The Kremlin has denied being involved in such discussions.

Mr Navalny’s supporters and family appear to have had the upper hand, at least in part, over the funeral service, but authorities still appear to have managed to prevent a public wake for him.

A top aide to Mr Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, said Wednesday that the late opposition leader’s team had failed to secure a venue for a pre-funeral wake, following pressure from authorities on venue owners. He also said the team was unable to hold the funeral next Thursday as they had originally planned because the date coincides with President Vladimir V. Putin’s annual state of the nation address.

“In the Kremlin they understand that no one will worry about Putin and his speech on the day of Aleksei’s farewell,” Mr Zhdanov wrote on social media.

The funeral will take place at 2 p.m. at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God, Soothe My Sorrows, a Russian Orthodox church at least half an hour by metro from central Moscow. According to Russian news reports, Mr Navalny lived in Maryino, the neighborhood where the church is located, until 2017. He will be buried at the nearby Borisovskoye cemetery, Ms. Yarmysh said.