For years she sought to avoid the limelight. Now Alexei Navalny’s widow is vowing to continue his fight.
As many Russians were still reeling on Monday from the death of Alexei Navalny, they received news that could be of some comfort.
Three days after the Russian authorities declared the opposition politician had died in a prison north of the Arctic Circle, his wife Yulia Navalnaya on Monday said she would take up her husband’s mission to topple Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart, and half of my soul. But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up,” she announced in a YouTube video. “I will continue Alexei Navalny’s cause.”
It was a passionate declaration — and an unmistakably political one.
Navalnaya appears to be following in the footsteps of Belarus’ Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya who, after her husband’s jailing, took on his role as an opposition politician despite a lack of previous experience, becoming a lightning rod for protest against the country’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
The same day news of Navalny’s death broke, Navalnaya was filmed deep in conversation with Tsikhanouskaya at the Munich Security Conference, fueling speculation about her own plans.
And yet her statement on Monday surprised many — mainly because Navalnaya has spent years dismissing the idea that she wanted a political career of her own.
An economist by background, she met Alexei on a holiday in Turkey in 1998. The couple had their first child, daughter Dasha, several years later, after which Navalnaya became a stay-at-home mother.
In rare interviews, she appeared above all to strive for normalcy as her husband’s star rose and the Kremlin’s crackdown on him intensified.
“My main task is for our family to stay the same, despite everything,” she told Harper’s Bazaar.
Behind the scenes, however, those who knew the couple well said Navalnaya not only shared her husband’s views, but also helped shape them.
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Any chance Navalnaya had to stay out of the public eye was ruined after Alexei was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent in the summer of 2020.
She stoically spearheaded a campaign to have Navalny released from an Omsk hospital to be transported abroad for treatment, facing the media and badgering local medics and mysterious men in civilian clothes presumably sent by the Kremlin to cover up the poisoning.
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As he recovered, however, Navalnaya returned to her housewife persona.
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But Yulia’s pursuit of normalcy was once again disrupted when Alexei was arrested at Sheremetyevo airport upon returning to Russia in early 2021.
Supporters of the politician praised Navalnaya’s self-control as she kissed her husband goodbye at passport control before he was led away.
With Navalny being submitted to ever harsher conditions in jail, Navalnaya has in the past year become increasingly visible on the international stage.
She delivered a speech in March last year at the Oscars and most recently in Munich, just hours after learning of her husband’s death.
Presumably sensing Navalnaya’s potential, Russian state-affiliated media and social media have long sought to undermine her.
Among the stories that have been circulated about Navalnaya are reports of romantic affairs, her father being a KGB agent and her alleged German citizenship (all of which have been debunked).
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“She has shown great courage because it is clear that she will be the next target for the Kremlin’s smear campaigns,” Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer and longtime Navalny employee, told POLITICO from exile in Berlin. “They will try to break her.”
Navalny’s closest allies on Monday expressed their support for Navalnaya with Ivan Zhdanov writing she had “stepped in his [Alexei’s] place.”
“It was always important for her that the children remained children, that the home remained a home, and the family remained a family,” said Veduta, Navalny’s ally. “Now [after Navalny’s death] she doesn’t have a choice. They are one, she will never retreat or betray his ideals.”
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And then there are the huge shoes Navalnaya is looking to fill.
Unlike her husband, however, Navalnaya is currently outside Russia, which puts her out of the Kremlin’s reach.
“In a sense, Navalny has now been reincarnated in his wife, but unlike Navalny she is not in Russia,” said Stanovaya. “For the Russian regime, of course, this is rather bad news.”
- Discussion
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For years she wanted to avoid the limelight.
But now Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya has vowed to take up her husband's mission of toppling Vladimir Putin’s regime.
🔗 https://t.co/f4J2nzSoHR pic.twitter.com/VEXQSx185D
— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) February 20, 2024
I don’t say it often, but everyone should watch this video in its entirety.
The use of 'brave' as an adjective has become almost disposable these days, overused to the point of meaninglessness.
However, this video—filmed within 48 hours of learning that one of her greatest… pic.twitter.com/O1PeOV8bbp
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 20, 2024
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