Russians mourn human rights giant Lyudmila Alexeyeva

Russians on Tuesday paid their last respects to human rights icon Lyudmila Alexeyeva, with President Vladimir Putin attending a memorial ceremony despite the activist's criticism of his rule.

Alexeyeva died on Saturday at the age of 91 after an extraordinary seven-decade career that saw her promote human rights during the Soviet era and in modern Russia. Prominent opposition figures and ordinary Russians queued in the snow to get into the event amid heavy security.

Putin made a brief visit to the open-casket ceremony in Moscow's Central House of Journalists and spoke to Alexeyeva's family.

"She was the Iron Lady of Russia's human rights movement," opposition politician Andrey Nechaev said in the flower-decked hall.

Russia's Commissioner for Human Rights, Tatyana Moskalkova, praised Alexeyeva's "will to help people".

"It was amazing how she was able to have a dialogue with the authorities and with her opponents," Moskalkova said.

Alexeyeva's 77-year-old colleague Lev Ponomaryov, who is currently serving a 16-day jail sentence for calling for protests, was absent after a court denied his appeal to attend.

Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who has repeatedly been jailed for organising anti-Putin demonstrations, was at the event.

Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition politician who queued to bid farewell to Alexeyeva, told AFP that Putin's attendance was "more than contradictory".

"He probably wants to look human. But it looks disgusting on the background of what's happening in the country," he added.

Later in the day Putin unveiled a statue of the late Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as part of celebrations to mark the centenary of his birth.

Riot police lined the streets and mourners had to pass through metal detectors to get inside the building for Alexeyeva's memorial ceremony.

"Everyone respected her," said Nataliya Magnitskaya, a pensioner who queued to bid farewell to the rights defender.

Some visitors wore T-shirts bearing slogans in support of activists serving jail sentences in Russia.

Olga Trusevich, a 54-year-old archivist, wore a T-shirt in support of Oyub Titiev -- a rights activist detained in Chechnya.

Alexeyeva was the leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of Russia's oldest rights organisations which she helped found in 1976.

In the Soviet era, she campaigned against trials for dissidents and endured numerous searches and interrogations at the hands of the KGB.

Alexeyeva continued to campaign for human rights in modern Russia, refusing to register the Moscow Helsinki Group as a "foreign agent" as required by a 2012 law.

Putin began what has been described as a major crackdown on civil society that year, after thousands of Russians took to the streets to protest his return to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister.

Alexeyeva slammed Moscow's seizure of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 for "bringing shame on my country".

The activist died in a Moscow hospital on Saturday after a long illness. She will be buried at Moscow's Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.