Published
Update
Video length: 11 min
Yulia Navalnaïa’s speech to the European Parliament
Yulia Navalnaïa, widow of Alexeï Navalny, spoke at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday. – (FRANCEINFO)
She spoke two days before the funeral of her husband, a Russian opponent who died on February 16 in a penal colony in the Arctic.
“Today my husband died. I am back in Strasbourg, but I can no longer walk with my family.” The widow of Alexeï Navalny delivered a highly anticipated speech on Wednesday February 28 in front of the European Parliament, in the Alsatian city. During her speech, lasting approximately ten minutes, Yulia Navalnaïa spoke of the memory of her husband, “an inventor who always had new ideas”, died in an Arctic prison on February 16. His funeral will be celebrated on Friday, as his team announced Wednesday morning. “I don’t know if they will take place peacefully or if the police will decide to arrest those who came to say goodbye to my husband”declared Yulia Navalnaïa.
During her speech, she delivered a violent charge against Vladimir Putin, whom she accused of having “kill” her husband. “On his orders, Alexei was tortured for three years. He was starved in a small concrete cell. (…) Then they killed him. After that, they mistreated his body and mistreated his own mother”, denounced the opponent to the Kremlin. The Russian president is in his eyes “a bandit with blood on his hands”, “the head of a criminal organization”.
Two years after the start of the war in Ukraine, triggered by Vladimir Putin, Yulia Navalnaïa made her tribute to her husband resonate with the current conflict at the gates of Europe. “This public murder showed everyone that Putin is capable of anything and that you cannot negotiate with him”, she warned. At the end of her speech, Yulia Navalnaïa was applauded at length by the European deputies, who stood up to greet her.
