The activists, who will gather at the Memorial to Navalny, on Rua Visconde de Santarém, in Lisbon, intend to wear masks with the portrait of the Russian opponent and march towards Praça dos Restauradores “to the sound of anti-war songs and declare quotes from Alexei”, added the Association of Free Russians.

The event was scheduled for the day on which the charismatic defender of the fight against corruption in Russia was born, who died in February at the age of 47 while under arrest by Russian authorities and in circumstances that are still unclear.

“We want to say that Vladimir Putin's regime is illegitimate, that the current war must end, and that troops must be withdrawn from all of Ukraine. We also want to call on Russians who are in relative safety abroad to take action. And to Russians under Putin's repressive regime, we ask you to maintain faith that the defeat of this regime is inevitable. Alexei asked us not to give up. And we will not give up”, the note reads.

Russian activists also denounced that the memorial to Navalny has been “often vandalized by local ‘Putinists’”, with drawings with the letter ‘Z’ [letter painted on Russian military vehicles used in the invasion of Ukraine], cuts, or theft.

And they added that the memorial is being restored while they work with local authorities to place “a stone memorial resistant to vandalism” in the same space.

Russian activists also defended the change of the name of part of the street where the Russian Embassy in Lisbon is located, to “simultaneously honour Navalny and Boris Nemtsov”, the latter also an opposition figure who was shot dead on a bridge near the wall of the Kremlin in 2015.

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