She said she was not sure whether reports of her husband's death were true. But she said, her voice trembling with anger: “I want Putin and his entourage and Putin’s friends and his government to know that they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family, to my husband. And that day will come very soon.”
She pointed out that Navalny – who spoke strongly against Russia's war in Ukraine and called for compensation to be paid from Russian oil and gas revenues – would have wanted to be in Munich, if he were in her place.
“He will be on this podium,” Navalnaya said, adding: “I want to call on the world, everyone in this room, and people around the world, to work together to defeat this evil. Defeat this terrible regime in Russia.”
Navalnaya said she was confused about whether to stay in Munich or immediately travel to her children. The couple had a 23-year-old daughter named Daria and a teenage son named Zakhar.
In August 2020, Navalnaya left them at home while still asleep as she raced on a flight to Siberia where her husband was in a coma, having fallen mysteriously ill during a flight back to Moscow. Navalny was poisoned with a banned nerve agent, and Navalnaya later personally appealed to Putin to allow her husband to be flown to Germany for treatment.
Navalnaya has generally shied away from attention, declining to give most media interviews and rarely speaking publicly — though she has made notable exceptions, such as her speech while accepting the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2023 for the film about the poisoning attack on her husband and family. Investigate the Russian killers responsible. Daria and Zakhar joined her on stage in Los Angeles.
Despite her reluctance to be the center of attention, Navalnaya has been an important partner to her husband throughout his career, often appearing with him at protests, and in courtrooms as he faced a series of prosecutions in cases widely viewed as political vendetta. , as she sometimes did. Joint interviews with him. She also made countless trips to visit him in prisons.
In 2013, she told an interviewer that she could envision her husband as president of Russia, but not herself as first lady. “I want him as president because I want someone who has overcome a lot,” she said. “I think he deserves it. Sharing his convictions, I imagine him as president.”
“I can't really imagine [myself] She added: As first lady. “I imagine myself as his wife, whatever.”
Navalnaya, 47, met her husband, who was the same age as her, while on vacation with friends at a resort in Turkey, a classic post-Soviet romance. Their relationship became a source of amazement and admiration for supporters.
Over the years, she worked to give her children a normal upbringing even as their father was subjected to relentless attacks, including two different attacks with bright green dye. One of those attacks, in 2017, damaged one of his eyes and required surgery.
Daria, a student at Stanford University, slowly transformed herself into an activist like her father, sometimes standing up for him at public events.
This included accepting the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought on his behalf from the European Parliament in December 2021. She delivered a scathing speech in which she accused Western politicians of being too timid in confronting Putin and his authoritarianism. She accused them of pragmatism, using the word as if it were an insult.
“I don’t understand why those who advocate practical relations with tyrants cannot simply open the history books,” she said. “It is very easy to understand the inescapable political law: appeasing tyrants and tyrants never succeeds.”
Last year, Daria gave a TED Talk in which she described her resilience amid her father's ongoing imprisonment.
“I miss him every day,” she said. “I'm afraid my father won't be able to come to my graduation or walk down the aisle with me at my wedding. But if being my father's daughter has taught me anything, it's to never give in to fear and sadness.
