Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, delivered a surprise speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, hours after shocking reports from Russian authorities that her husband died in prison.
“If it’s true, I want [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, his entourage, Putin’s friends and his government to know they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family, and my husband,” she said to applause.
“And that day will come very soon.”
Speaking from a podium to a packed room, Navalnaya also cautioned that Putin and his government “always lie.”
The United States has yet to confirm the reports from Russia, and Navalny’s lawyers have not confirmed his death.
Navalny, 47, was an attorney, anti-corruption fighter, and the leading opposition figure to Putin, who has systematically suppressed dissent and eliminated political rivals, either through jail, exile or suspected assassinations.
Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism and fraud convictions that he and his allies said were retribution for his political activities.
Prison officials in the Arctic region where he was being held released a statement saying he “felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness,” and that attempts to resuscitate him “did not yield positive results.”
Navalnaya, speaking to world leaders Friday, said she was torn about whether to remain in Munich or fly to her children immediately.
“He would be on this stage,” she said of her husband.
“And I want to call the world, everyone who is in this room, people around the world, to together defeat this evil. Defeat this horrible regime in Russia.”
Navalny’s associates raised the alarm in December after his attorneys said they had not been able to reach him or knew where he was. He was located three weeks later at the IK-3 penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District in Siberia, known as Russia’s most remote and inaccessible prisons.
According to a video released Friday, he looked healthy and in good spirits during a hearing the day before his reported death.
The opposition leader rose to prominence leading anti-government protests in the early 2010s and then running for mayor of Moscow in 2013, when he secured almost a third of the vote, remarkably high for an opposition candidate in Putin’s Russia.
In 2020, Navalny nearly died in a suspected poisoning linked to Russia’s security service and was evacuated to Germany. He voluntarily returned to Russia the next year and was arrested and imprisoned.
Regina Zilbermints contributed.