“I invite you to share my rage, my anger, my rage and my hatred for those who dared to kill our future,” she said.
Any successor to Navalny will inherit a damaged opposition movement whose key figures are dead, imprisoned or in exile.
The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny embraces his wife Yulia in 2013.credit: AP
Many of Navalny's supporters fled abroad after the movement was labeled extremist, and those who remain inside Russia have little room to maneuver in a tightly controlled political system where unauthorized protests are banned.
But her statement, which included a call to oppose Russia's war in Ukraine, garnered more than 1.5 million views in three hours and nearly 50,000 comments. A social media account in her name was opened on X on Monday featuring her video statement which was viewed 1.4 million times in the same time frame, while her new account quickly gained tens of thousands of users.
Unlike her husband – who always said he would not be exiled and was arrested upon arriving in Russia in 2021 after returning from treatment in Germany for poisoning – she has not announced plans to return home.
But if it stays abroad, it risks being portrayed by Moscow as a puppet abroad, and will find it difficult to be politically significant.
Alexei Navalny with his wife Yulia recovering from poisoning at Charite Hospital in Berlin in 2020.credit: AP via Instagram
Before Monday, Navalnaya had largely stayed away from public politics, emphasizing her role in supporting her husband and keeping their family together despite Navalny's bruising battle with the Russian state.
While she has always made clear that she shares his anti-Putin views, she has limited her public appearances and statements to major turning points in his life, calling for his release and humane treatment, before retreating from public view again.
Navalnaya, an economist by education and a former bank employee, has stood by his side for years in protests, attended court hearings, been arrested several times, and helped Navalny survive and recover from what Western doctors said was a nerve agent poisoning attempt on his life. In 2020.
She graduated from the prestigious Russian Plekhanov University of Economics and was born in Moscow. Her father, Boris Ambrosimov, was a prominent scientist.
People clash with police during a 2021 protest in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in St. Petersburg, Russia.credit: AP
She met her future husband while on holiday in Turkey in 1998 and they married two years later, having a daughter, Daria, and a son, Zakhar. She and Navalny were members of the liberal Yabloko party.
Within hours of reports of Navalny's death on Friday, she made a surprise appearance at a security conference in Germany, where she told the public that Putin would take responsibility.
She met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the same event in Munich and also held talks with Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader.
She was in Brussels on Monday to attend a meeting of European Union foreign ministers.
A selfie posted by Yulia Navalnaya when she was detained during a protest against her husband's imprisonment in 2021.credit: AP
Moscow is watching closely.
Former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov accused Western intelligence services on Monday of trying to turn Navalnaya into a “Joan of Arc” figure, predicted that she would be forgotten over time, and advised her to remain “in a quiet place.”
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Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of analysis firm R.Politik, said Navalnaya's statement was “an unambiguous attempt at an independent political role” but pointed out several potential pitfalls and said it was too early to predict how she would perform.
“A lot will depend on what she offers. Not as the widow of a prominent politician who was tortured to death, but as an independent personality,” Stanovaya said.
Will she be able to find her own political style, content, and team that won't alienate people? Time will tell.”
“In a sense, Navalny is now embodied in his wife, but unlike Navalny, she is not in Russia,” Stanovaya said. POLITICO. “For the Russian regime, this is bad news, of course.”
Before his death, Alexei Navalny urged critics of Putin's regime to go to the polls at midday on March 17 – the last day of voting in the Russian presidential election – to demonstrate.
“Real people standing in line to vote against Putin would serve as a powerful symbol against the fake, rigged ‘yes vote,’” he wrote.
Reuters
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