Lev Ponomaryov, a 77-year-old veteran activist and longtime friend of former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, was barred from attending Alexeyeva’s funeral on Tuesday, as he serves a 16-day jail sentence for calling for a protest over the detention of a group of young people accused of extremism. Meanwhile, Putin attended Alexeyeva’s funeral and when asked about Ponomaryov’s detention, he said, “We don’t want to have events that resemble those in Paris,” The Moscow Times reports. Ponomaryov was also in jail for the the 100th anniversary of the birthday of dissident writer Alexander Solzhnenitsyn, which too, fell on Tuesday.