Navalny’s wife vows to continue resistance; battle for free Russia

YULIA Navalnaya said yesterday that she would continue the fight of her dead husband Alexei Navalny for a “free Russia” and called on opposition supporters to battle President Vladimir Putin with greater fury than ever.

Navalnaya’s call from abroad for resistance to Putin comes less than a month before a presidential election that is almost certain to hand the Kremlin chief another six-year term.

In a nine-minute video laced with rage, Navalnaya, 47, said Putin had killed her husband and in doing so had cut away half her heart and robbed their two children of a father.

“I want to live in a free Russia, I want to build a free Russia,” Navalnaya said in the video message titled “I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny”.

“I urge you to stand next to me,” she said. “I ask you to share the rage with me. Rage, anger, hatred towards those who dared to kill our future.”

It was unclear where she was speaking from but she was not in Russia. Navalnaya was due to attend a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels yesterday which was weighing imposing further sanctions on Russia over her husband’s death.

Navalnaya accused the Russian authorities of hiding Navalny’s corpse and of waiting for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to disappear from his body. She gave no evidence but said her team would publish details of who killed her husband.

“Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” Navalnaya said. “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 I have no right to give up. I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny to fight for our country.”

Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died suddenly on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said.

The West and Navalny’s supporters say Putin is behind Navalny’s death. The Kremlin has denied involvement in his death and said the Western claims were unacceptable.

Putin has made no public comment on Navalny’s death but it has further deepened a schism in relations between Moscow and the West caused by the nearly two-year Ukraine war.

Asked how Putin reacted to news of the death, his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “I have nothing to add.”

Navalny rose to prominence more than a decade ago by documenting and poking fun at “the vast corruption and opulence of the crooks and thieves” running Putin’s Russia.

He was by far the most charismatic figure in Russia’s scattered opposition – and he gained respect for returning to Russia after a 2020 poisoning in Siberia. Navalny said a Russian hit squad had smeared Novichok in his underpants, which the Kremlin denied.

Continuing Navalny’s battle, is fraught with difficulty – and danger.

Any attempt to lead the opposition from within Russia is almost certain to lead to arrest, but doing so from abroad would be cast by Moscow as a foreign puppet controlled by Western intelligence.

“If (Navalnaya) does this in Russia, she will have a high chance of ending up where her late husband ended up,” said Alexei Levinson, head of the sociocultural research at Russian pollster Levada Centre.

Russian authorities cast Navalny and his supporters as extremists with links to the CIA intelligence agency and outlawed his movement.