Yulia Navalnaya wants to become the new Navalny

She appears on the screen in a dark dress and, with her arms crossed, as if death had not taken her by surprise, she begins her speech invoking the great absence: “I should not sit here, my There must be someone else in place, but That man was murdered by Vladimir Putin“. Background, remaining in the dark, like all details about her husband’s death. The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced in a video yesterday Monday that she will continue her husband’s fight for an independent Russia. Yulia Navalnaya called on his supporters to fight the Russian president with more ferocity than ever before.

Her 47-year-old husband collapsed and died suddenly on Friday after a walk at Polar Wolf Prison in the Arctic, where he was serving a sentence of nearly three decades. The regime has detained about 400 people over the weekend: just for leaving flowers, but the authorities have priority peace on the road,

The ball is in the court of dissent, although those who are not in jail are in exile. The strategy is not known yet. But the objective is clear: “We will tell you the names and show the faces” of those who “committed that crime.” ,We know why Putin killed Alexey three days ago, we will tell you soon

“, Navalnya clearly promised in his speech.

The video published on Navalny’s official YouTube channel received more than three million views in six hours. But Navalny’s death deprives Russia of unequal opposition most charismatic and brave leader, Perhaps he would not have been able to defeat the Russian president in the votes, but he would have been able to fool the ornamental rivals the regime has cultivated over decades.

Putin, who is 71, is preparing for an election that will keep him in power until at least 2030. Any project that could eliminate them must be destroyed. Yulia Navalnaya wants to be the Kremlin’s answer to the replacement. Charismatic but discreet, for years she has despised the idea that she would one day take a position among the Russian dissidents. With courage, anger and pain in his eyes, he swore to continue his leadership in front of a shocked opposition.

Although there seems little hope, he believes that Russians want to live differently.

Putin has killed her husband, she said, and in doing so has deprived her of a husband and her two children of a father. “By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me: half of my heart and half of my soul.” “But I still have the other half, and it tells me I have no right to give up. Because the only answer to such a crime was to continue my late husband’s fight for a free and prosperous Russia. “I ask you to stand with me”, he continued. “I ask you to share your anger with me. “Anger, rage, hatred towards those who dared to destroy our future.”

If Navalnaya — who has not announced plans to return home — puts herself at the forefront of the protests, she would be following the path taken by American civil rights activists to widow activists in other parts of the world. coretta scott king Until heart aquino from Philippines. Another close example is embodied by the Belarusian opposition leader, the exiled Sviatlana Tsijanouskaya, who reluctantly ran for president in 2020 after her husband was jailed. But if she lives abroad, she risks having Russians view her as distant, someone detached from their daily reality. In the Belarusian case this has partially happened.

Alexei Navalny never asked Russians to take risks he was not willing to take. In the present situation, Her figure seems unattainable,

without any explanation

Navalnaya accused Russian authorities of hiding Navalny’s body and waiting for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to disappear from his body.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in his death and said Western claims that Putin was responsible for the death are unacceptable. But there are more and more indications that something is being hidden. The Kremlin said an investigation into his death was ongoing. Researchers have warned that They will not hand over Navalny’s body for at least 14 days:They sent him for chemical examination.

An application has been submitted to the Moscow City Council for a march in memory of Alexei Navalny and another opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, whose assassination this month marks the ninth anniversary.