Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday paid his respects at the memorial service of ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose death at the age of 75 was announced this week.
Hundreds of ordinary Russians – including many young people – came to pay their last respects to the politician who had urged authorities to bomb Ukraine.
An eccentric political showman, Zhirinovsky co-founded and led the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), one of the main forces in the country's parliament, since 1990.
After Mass in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, an open casket ceremony was held with Putin laying a bouquet of red roses near the coffin and bowing his head for a moment of silence.
The ceremony took place in the Moscow Hall of Columns, where Joseph Stalin lay in state in 1953.
Late last year Zhirinovsky appeared to predict Russia's military action in Ukraine and urged Russian forces to strike the pro-Western country.
"I very much respected this man," said Svetlana Gorodnyatskaya, a 55-year-old member of the LDPR party, crying. "This is simply an irreparable loss both for politics and for our entire country."
Kseniya Vygovskaya, a 22-year-old graduate student, praised Zhirinovsky for standing up for Russia's interests.
"Vladimir Volfovich is one of those people who sincerely loved his homeland, who sincerely wished it prosperity," she said, referring to him by his name and patronymic.
Zhirinovsky was later buried at Moscow's prestigious Novodevichy cemetery.
His critics despised him for being the Kremlin's token opponent who helped channel discontent. Since Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its subsequent stand-off with the West, Zhirinovsky had shifted into making anti-Kyiv public speeches.
Anti-Kremlin political observer Sergei Medvedev said the politician was not worth a "single kind word."
"His talented, carefully calculated and generously paid buffoonery gave rise to modern Russian fascism," Medvedev said this week.
Known for his brash, confrontational style and eyebrow-raising antics, Zhirinovsky had been a permanent fixture on the Russian political scene for the past three decades and thrived on controversy.
Zhirinovsky took part in all of post-Soviet Russia's presidential elections and had been a member of parliament since 1993, when his party scored a major success with nearly 23% of the vote.
Often described as a clown in Russian political circles, he was known for his fiery anti-American, anti-liberal and anti-communist speeches.
