Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said Monday she would take up her husband’s work and fight for their country and against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a video posted on her husband’s YouTube channel, Navalnaya asked her husband’s followers to join her in taking up his fight and honoring his legacy.
“By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and my soul. But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up,” she said in the video, according to a Google translation of the Russian transcript.
“I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. Continue to fight for our country. And I invite you to stand next to me. To share not only the grief and endless pain that envelops us and does not let go. I ask you to share my rage. Rage and anger towards those who dared to kill our future.”
She shared the YouTube video on a new profile on X, formerly Twitter, and included links to her husband’s former spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, and his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, for further information about what she described as his assassination.
The video is titled “I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny,” and the description reads, “An appeal by Yulia Navalnaya. Alexei’s work will continue. The fight for a free Russia will not stop.”
Her appeal comes just days after the Russian Federal Prison Service announced Navalny’s death, which occurred while the opposition leader was serving out his 19-year sentence in Russia’s highest security level prison near the Arctic Circle. The service said the death happened after Navalny was out on a walk and then suddenly lost consciousness. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, the Russian agency said.
The news sparked concerns of foul play from world leaders across the globe, and many blamed the death on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was accused of ordering an assassination attempt in 2020 on Navalny. Putin has denied involvement in that incident, in which Navalny was poisoned.
“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled,” President Biden said Friday. Biden added that although it was unclear what exactly precipitated the death on Friday, it certainly “was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Navalnaya echoed this sentiment in her video on Monday, issuing a scathing indictment of Putin.
“I shouldn’t have been in this place. I shouldn’t have recorded this video. There should have been another person in my place, but this person was killed by Vladimir Putin. Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband Alexei Navalny. Putin killed the father of my children, took away the most precious thing I had, the closest and most beloved person.
“But Putin also took Navalny away from you, where in a colony in the Far North, beyond the Arctic Circle, in eternal winter, Putin killed not just a man, Alexei Navalny, but together with him he wanted to kill our hopes, our freedom, our future,” she said.
Navalnaya’s comments also come just after Russian authorities announced they would extend the probe into her husband’s death, after his mother and lawyers were denied entry to the morgue to see her son’s body. She pledged to find answers.
“My husband could not be broken. And that’s exactly why Putin killed him. Shameful, cowardly, not daring to look him in the eyes or simply say his name. And just as vilely and cowardly, they are now hiding his body, not showing it to his mother, not giving it back, pathetically lying and waiting for the traces of Putin’s next ‘newbie’ to disappear there,” she said.
Navalnaya also said her organization would find out exactly who killed her husband and why.
“We will name names and show faces. But the main thing we can do for Alexey and for ourselves is to continue to fight,” she said.