The Schwarzenbergers put up portraits of Navalny. At the Red Army monument

The wall behind the Monument to the Heroes of the Red Army in Vienna has been commemorating the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny since Tuesday. Two of his portraits were added to it, the AP agency points out.

“The monument commemorates the victims of the dictatorship, and Mr. Navalny was clearly a victim of the dictatorship,” said Maximillian Schaffgotsch of the Schwarzenberg Princely Family Foundation. The wall itself belongs to the Schwarzenberg Palace, which is owned by the family of the late Czech ex-foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg. Already in 2022, he and his son Jan Nepomuk Schwarzenberg advocated, for example, that the wall be painted blue and yellow. It was a reaction to the Russian invasion and an expression of solidarity with war-torn Ukraine.

Together with Jan Nepomuk Schwarzenberg, the chairman of the liberal Austrian party NEOS Beate Meinl-Reisinger and journalist Hans Rauscher are behind the idea itself.

Navalny’s portraits were sprayed on the wall by the Austrian graffiti duo Joel Gamnou, who were directly approached by the Schwarzenberg Princely Family Foundation. “We’ve only had positive feedback so far,” said Jonathan Gamperl, one of the artists. The pair were inspired by famous images from the media. Behind the columns of the monument to Soviet heroes, Navalny can be seen in a suit and tie – this is a reference to a photo from a historic court hearing almost ten years ago. The second portrait depicts Navalny with his hands in the shape of a heart.

The portraits appeared on the wall a few days after an improvised monument to Navalny was damaged for the second time in Vienna. It is located right across from the Russian Embassy in Vienna. Activists of the “Russians against the war” initiative have therefore brought flowers to the site and pasted posters on the fence of the building in recent days. In Russian, they had slogans like “Good day, here’s Navalny again.”