who is Yulia Navalnaïa, the widow of Alexeï Navalny who took up the torch of opposition to Vladimir Putin?

A cold and soon contagious anger? Since the death of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny in his Arctic prison on February 16, his widow, Yulia Navalnaïa, wants to continue her political fight, increasing her travels. “I will continue for our country, with you. And I call on you all to stand close to me”she solemnly declared in a video, broadcast three days after the announcement of the disappearance of the anti-corruption opponent. Propelled at the age of 47 to the front of the stage by the force of circumstances, she did not walk away.

“I should never have been there, I shouldn’t have recorded that video.”

Yulia Navalnaïa, widow of opponent Alexeï Navalny

in a YouTube video

Here she is speaking before the European Parliament, Wednesday February 28. Yulia Navalnaïa also spoke at the European Council three days after the death of her husband, after meeting US President Joe Biden. She is no longer holding back her blows against the Russian president. “What Putin is doing now is hatred. No. Not hatred. It’s a form of Satanism”she denounced on Saturday, while the family tried to recover the body of Alexeï Navalny. “I don’t care how the killer’s spokesperson comments on my words”she had already reacted, after recriminations from the Kremlin.

After the death of her husband, Yulia Navalnaya published a photo on Instagram, in which he kisses her on the forehead. “I love you”, specifies the caption. Their story had lasted for twenty-six years. While working in commerce, after training in economics, Ioulia Navalnaïa, born in Moscow in 1976, met her future husband in a Turkish seaside resort. She married the young lawyer two years later, in 2000, the same year that Vladimir Putin was elected president for a first term. The opponent is going on a crusade against the corruption that is plaguing the country, with the creation in 2011 of a dedicated foundation.

“I share his beliefs”

Behind the scenes, Yulia Navalnaïa politically supports her husband. He even declared that his wife’s opinions were even more radical than his own. “It’s much more interesting to be the wife of a politician”she judged three years ago, in an interview with the Russian version of Harper’s Bazaar . However, she limits her appearances to demonstrations or an electoral campaign. But when her husband was arrested while awaiting trial in 2013, she immediately came to the rescue, in an interview given to the Dojd channel. “I share his convictions and I imagine him as president”she says, adding that their daughter Dasha already explained, in kindergarten, that her father fought “scammers”.

In 2020, on a flight between Moscow and Tomsk, Alexeï Navalny suffered a seizure, after being poisoned with a neurotoxic substance. The plane is diverted to Omsk. Yulia Navalnaïa moved heaven and earth to obtain a medical transfer abroad and even wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin asking him to authorize this trip to Germany. Once in Europe, she regularly visits his bedside, and they sometimes listen to the song Perfect Day by Duran Duran. When Yulia Navalnaïa makes an appearance alongside her husband, in a long interview conducted by star blogger Youri Doud, it is mainly to discuss the way in which the American University of Stanford was chosen for their daughter Dasha.

On January 16, 2021, the couple headed back to Moscow, in a plane full of journalists. Beforehand, the spouses “discussed at length” before this big jump, explains one of their friends, Vladimir Ashurkov, quoted by the American agency Associated Press. The opponent was arrested as soon as he got off the plane at Moscow-Sheremetievo airport. This is the last time that Yulia Navalnaïa sees her husband in freedom. A few days later, she was briefly arrested in the Russian capital, during a demonstration in support of the opponent. In the following months, she occasionally posted selfies, after visits to her husband in prison.

Forced into exile to stay free?

But these clichés are becoming rarer, because the opponent is repeatedly placed in solitary confinement. Yulia Navalnaïa regularly leaves the country to attract international attention. In the United States, in March 2023, in Hollywood, she is on the Oscar stage, when the feature film Navalny receives the prize for best documentary. When she spoke that evening, it had already been more than a year since she had last seen her husband, wheeled around in a disciplinary cell and considerably thinner. “Putin will stop at nothing to retain power and money”she then declared, in an interview with Spiegel . Excluding, again, going into politics.

With the death of the opponent, the fate of Yulia Navalnaïa is now compared to that of Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, propelled to the head of the Belarusian opposition after the imprisonment of her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky in May 2020. Sentenced to exile, the two women also met behind closed doors, without the content of their exchanges having been relayed. In 2021, Alexeï Navalny decided to return to Russia, well aware that an opposition in exile was a weaker opposition. What scenario for his widow? In June 2023, the media Russia Today, citing sources within law enforcement, wrote that Yulia Navalnaïa would be arrested on her return, if she went to yet another trial of her husband.

The Kremlin has already launched a campaign of discredit: Telegram channels and the media are buzzing with rumors and false information about alleged infidelity or about her refusal to visit her husband in prison. If Russian power did not wait to shoot its first arrows, Yulia Navalnaïa has yet to define her role as opponent.

At the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council, she mainly called for new sanctions against Russian officials and drew attention to the plight of her compatriots in exile. But without mentioning, at this stage, internal policy objectives. His appearances alongside Western leaders, moreover, could work against him with Russian opinion, underlines Tatiana Stanovaïa, researcher at the Carnegie Center, interviewed by Politico. “In Russia, it sounds like a curse.”

A leading figure capable of unifying the opposition?

Another challenge: uniting a fragmented opposition, while the Navalny team, united around the Anti-Corruption Foundation that he founded, is known for its intransigence and mistrust. As CNN recalls, Alexeï Navalny first joined the liberal Yabloko party, before being dismissed in 2007 for his nationalist and patriotic opinions, ideas from which he subsequently distanced himself. In recent weeks, Yulia Navalnaïa has certainly provided her sponsorship to Boris Nadejdine, a liberal personality whose presidential candidacy was ultimately invalidated by those in power. But she also angry with himafter a wording on the restitution of the body of her late husband.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian press is observing all this with caution, because it knows from experience that Western attention is limited in time. Above all, she is demanding pledges from the new designated chief opponent. “Youlia Navalnaïa must make her choice quicklysummarizes journalist and columnist Ivan Verstyuk, in a text published by Kanal 24. Even the most high-profile anti-corruption investigations have not produced the expected political result against the Kremlin. Only an anti-war political program will allow Yulia Navalnaya to receive sufficient support from the West.