Alexei Navalny Buried to Music From Sinatra... and ‘Terminator 2’

As Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was laid to rest on Friday, the music from Terminator 2: Judgment Day was played. The 1991 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie memorably culminates in a scene in which a machine sent from the future sacrifices itself for the good of humanity by being lowered into a vat of molten steel. “Alexey considered Terminator 2 the best film in the whole world,” his spokesperson Kira Yarmis wrote in an X post. “Music from the final scene was played at his funeral.” Navalny’s aide Ivan Zhdanov also posted on Telegram to say that the coffin had been “lowered into the grave to the music of [Frank Sinatra’s] ‘My Way.’” “Goodbye my friend,” he later added. Before the burial, hundreds of mourners had attended a heavily policed funeral service for Navalny at a nearby church in a Moscow suburb, where supporters reportedly chanted anti-Putin slogans including “Russia will be free.”