Wife makes dramatic appearance in munich
MUNICH>> This was not the speech she expected to give, at least not on this day. Yulia Navalnaya had come to a gathering of world leaders in Munich to press them to remember her imprisoned husband and her troubled country.
And then just as the conference opened Friday morning came word from Russian state media that her husband, the crusading, defiant dissident Alexei Navalny, was dead in one of President Vladimir Putin’s prisons.
By her own admission, her first thought was to fly away, to join her grown children to mourn in private a man who had survived a horrific poisoning and years behind bars. But before she did, she decided she had to speak out. Because he would have wanted her to.
Navalnaya stunned the presidents, prime ministers, diplomats and generals at the Munich Security Conference when she strode into the hall Friday afternoon, took the stage and delivered an unflinching condemnation of Putin, vowing that he and his circle would be brought to justice. Her dramatic appearance electrified a conference consumed with the threat posed by Russia.
“I don’t know whether to believe the news or not, the awful news that we receive only from government sources in Russia,” she told the high- powered audience, which hung on her every word.
“We cannot believe Putin and Putin’s government. They’re always lying.
“But if this is true,” she went on, speaking in Russian, “I want Putin and everyone around him, Putin’s friends, his government, to know that they will bear responsibility for what they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband. And this day will come very soon.
“And I want to call on the world community,” she continued, “everyone in this room and people around the world to come together to defeat this evil, defeat this horrible regime that is now in Russia.”
Navalnaya spoke clearly and calmly, with no notes but remarkable composure, her face etched with evident pain. Standing at the lectern, she clasped her hands in front of her and stared straight ahead as if willing herself to focus on her message.
She spoke for just two minutes, but it captivated the audience. The crowd rose to its feet to give her an emotional standing ovation.
“On what must be the worst day of her life, she was so strong, and a reminder that Russians who believe in freedom will continue to fight for as long as it takes to hold Putin accountable for his barbaric crimes,” Michael Mcfaul, a former ambassador to Russia, said of Navalnaya after her speech.
In the annals of international meetings, it would be hard to remember a more riveting moment, when the careful choreography and scripted speeches laden with diplomatic jargon fall to the wayside as life- ordeath questions play out in such personal fashion.