She never wanted to be in the spotlight – now she continues her husband Alexei’s struggle: this is how Yulia Navalnaya became Putin’s biggest opponent

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 iQNQmc”>

For a long time, she was mainly the strong woman at the side of the prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny († 47) – after his death, Julia Navalnaya (47) now wants to continue his legacy herself. “I will continue to fight for the freedom of our country,” the widow of the Russian opposition politician promised in a video message on Monday. She called on her husband’s followers to support her.

“The most important thing we can do for Alexei and ourselves is to keep fighting, more desperately and bitterly than before,” Navalnaya said. The opponent: Russian President Vladimir Putin (71). She accused him of being responsible for her husband’s death. Putin “killed” Navalny, she said.

Hope for a ‘better Russia’

Navalnaya’s first appearance after her husband’s death had already made an impression: A few hours after Russian authorities announced that the 47-year-old had died in a penal camp in the Arctic Circle, the widow stepped to the microphone at the Munich security conference. Friday.

Navalnaya was actually supposed to speak at the security conference about the hope for a “better Russia,” but news of her husband’s death changed everything. Instead of flying home, she said she decided to stay; she was sure her husband would have done the same.

“If this is true, I want Putin, his staff, his entire entourage, his entire government and his friends to know that they will be punished for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband,” she said. Woman with trembling voice. “And that day will come very soon.”

“He immediately thought I should be his wife.”

Navalnaya studied economics in Russia and worked for a bank in Moscow. Then in 1998 she met a young lawyer named Alexei Navalny at a resort in Turkey. “He immediately thought I should be his wife,” she says. And indeed: two years later the couple married.

Shortly afterwards, their daughter Daria Navalnaya (23) was born and the economist eventually retired from the professional world to devote herself to her family. And to support her husband and the fight for a free Russia. She acted in the background and helped him in almost every area. He discussed with his wife what he was planning to do, what he was saying and what he was wearing.

“Nothing is difficult when you love”

At Alexei Navalny’s side, Yulia Navalnaya experienced the hope that the large-scale demonstrations initiated by her husband would spread in Russia. She took her husband to Germany for treatment in 2020 after he was poisoned and hovered between life and death for days. She was with him when Navalny flew back to Russia a few months later with his head held high, barely recovered and arrested there immediately after landing.

Although Russian authorities sentenced her husband to 19 years in the camp in several trials and despite the terrible prison conditions in which he was held, the 47-year-old did not give up hope. Navalnaya told Spiegel last year that she believes in seeing her husband free again: “Nothing is difficult when you love.”

Living in public

Navalny himself said about his wife that without her he would not have endured his bitter struggle against the Kremlin and President Putin. His last public message was a greeting to her on Valentine’s Day, in which he wrote: “I feel you are close to me every second.”

Unlike Putin, whose private life is treated as a state secret in Russia, the Navalny couple exposed themselves and their daily lives publicly. Over time, Julia Navalnaya became as much of a public figure as her husband.

Navalny’s colleagues even dreamed of Navalny’s future as a politician, even before Navalny himself was behind bars. She herself rejected this and emphasized that she was above all a mother and wife.

Separated after landing

After Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in Siberia in August 2020 and fell into a coma, Yulia Navalnaya fought for her husband to be treated in Germany instead of Russia. The Russian doctors refused for days, but eventually they managed to fly Navalny to Berlin. “Every moment I thought: ‘I have to get him out of here,’” Navalnaya later reported.

Five months later, she showed strength again when the couple returned to Moscow, knowing that the journey would end in prison. “Waiter, bring us vodka, we are flying home,” Navalnaya said during the flight, quoting a line from a Russian cult film. After landing, the couple was separated at passport control and never saw each other again. A crowd of people greeted Navalnaya in front of the airport with cries of “Julia!”

Following the death of Alexei Navalny, many are wondering who else but Yulia Navalnaya could unite the Russian opposition, which has been decimated by numerous arrests or driven into exile, as a leading figure. For political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya it is clear: “Whether Julia Navalnaya wants it or not – she will become a political personality.” On Monday, Navalnaya took part in a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. (AFP/jmh)

Source: Blick