Pro-democracy leader’s widow vows to carry on his work
The widow of Alexei Navalny said on Monday that she would carry on her husband’s work to challenge President Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule, presenting herself for the first time as a political force and calling on his followers to rally alongside her.
Navalny’s sudden death in prison, which was announced by Russian authorities on Friday, left a vacuum in a decimated Russian opposition. His supporters had wondered whether his wife, Yulia Navalnaya — who long shunned the spotlight — might step in, despite immense challenges, to fill the void.
In a video released on Monday, Navalnaya, 47, signaled that she would. She said she was appearing on her husband’s YouTube channel for the first time to tell his followers that the best way to honor his legacy was “to fight more desperately and furiously than before.”
“I am going to continue the work of Alexei Navalny and continue to fight for our country,” Navalnaya said. “I call on you to stand beside me, to share not only in the grief and endless pain that has enveloped us and won’t let go. I ask you to share my rage — to share my rage, anger and hatred of those who have dared to kill our future.”
The nearly 9-minute video, which showed Navalnaya seated with her hands folded on a marble surface under dramatic lighting, was crafted as an introduction of sorts to a new leader of the fractured pro-democracy movement against Putin. Long plagued by infighting and competing egos, the movement has withered under a multiyear crackdown in Russia that has left its most prominent leaders exiled, jailed, or dead.
Navalnaya had often pushed back against suggestions that she enter politics, telling Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine last year that “I don’t think this is an idea
I want to play with.”
On Monday, however, she presented a different face in trying to rally her husband’s followers, suggesting that there was no alternative and saying that the movement should derive strength from his memory.
“I know it feels impossible to do any more, but we have to — to come together in one strong fist and strike with it at this maddened regime, at Putin, at his friends and his bandits in uniform, at these thieves and killers who have crippled our country,” she said.