Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia, has announced that she will run for Russian president

Alexei Navalny's widow, Yulia, has announced that she will run for Russian president

Navalny family

Alexei Navalny and Yulia Navalnaya at a rally before the Moscow mayoral elections in 2013

Yulia Navalnaya told me that she intends to become president of Russia. She looks me straight in the eye. No hesitation or hesitation.

This, like many of the decisions she made with her husband, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is unambiguous.

Navalnaya knows she will face arrest if she returns to her homeland while President Putin is still in power. His administration accused her of participating in extremism.

This is not an empty threat. And in Russia it can lead to death.

Her husband, a vocal critic of President Putin, was sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, charges deemed politically motivated. He died in February in a brutal penal colony in the Arctic Circle. US President Joe Biden said there was “no doubt” that Putin was responsible. Russia denies killing Navalny.

Sitting for our interview in a London law office, Yulia Navalnaya looks like a successor to Navalny, the lawyer-turned-politician who dreamed of a different Russia.

As she releases “Patriot,” the memoir her husband was writing before his death, Yulia Navalnaya reaffirms her plans to continue his fight for democracy.

“When the time is right, I will participate in the elections… as a candidate,” she told the BBC.

“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. “I will do everything in my power to overthrow his regime as quickly as possible.”

Watch: Alexei Navalny’s widow wants Putin to be in prison

Currently, this must be from outside Russia.

She told me that while Putin was in charge, she couldn’t go back. But Yulia looks forward to the day she believes will inevitably come, when the Putin era ends and Russia opens up again.

She, like her husband, believes there will be a chance for free and fair elections. When that happens, she says she’ll be there.

Watch on BBC iPlayer (UK only) Evgeni Feldman

Alexei, Yulia and their son Zakhar at a rally in Moscow in 2017, surrounded by police

Her family had already suffered greatly in the struggle against the Russian regime, but she remained calm throughout the interview, standing firm whenever Putin’s name was mentioned.

Her personal grief is channeled into overt political messages anyway. But since Alexei’s death, she told me, she has been thinking more about the impact of the couple’s shared political beliefs and decisions on their children, Dasha, 23, and Zakhar, 16.

“I understand they didn’t choose him.”

But she says she never asked Navalny to change course.

Navalny family

Yulia and Alexei with their children Zakhar and Dasha in Germany

The Russian Central Election Commission banned him from running for president.

His investigations through his anti-corruption foundation have been watched by millions online, including a video released after his latest arrest in which he claims Putin built a billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea.

The president denied this.

Alexei Navalny/Anti-Corruption Foundation

Navalny says the investigation into Putin’s “palace” on the Black Sea took months

“When you live inside this life, you realize that he will never give up, and that is what you love,” Yulia says.

Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020.

He was flown to Germany for treatment and the German Chancellor demanded answers from Putin’s regime.

Navalny worked with open source investigators from Bellingcat and traced the poisoning to Russia’s FSB security service.

Navalny family

Alexei says in his memoirs that after surviving the Novichok poisoning, Yulia made a “decisive remark” that he might be poisoned again, so it was important for him to become “physically fit.”

He began writing his memoirs when he recovered.

He and Yulia returned to Russia in January 2021 where he was arrested after landing.

Many wonder why they returned.

“There can be no debate. You just need to support him. I knew he wanted to return to Russia. I knew he wanted to be with his supporters, he wanted to be an example to all these people with his courage and boldness to show people that there is no need to be afraid of this dictator.

“I never let my mind think that he might be killed… We have lived this life for decades and it is about sharing these difficulties, sharing these opinions. You support him.”

Getty Images

A journalist asked Navalny during his return trip to Russia in January 2021 if he was “worried now,” and he replied, “No.”

After his imprisonment, Navalny continued his writing in notebooks, social media posts and a prison memoir, which is being published for the first time. He added that the prison authorities confiscated some of his writings.

The Patriot is a detector – and a destroyer. We all know the final chapter of Navalny’s novel, which makes the description of his treatment – and his courage in the face of it – all the more poignant.

Navalny spent 295 days in solitary confinement, where, according to the book, he was punished for violations including unbuttoning the top button of his military uniform. He was denied phone calls and visits.

“Normally, the standard practice is exile for only two weeks, which is the most severe punishment,” Yulia Navalnaya told me. “My husband spent almost one year there.”

In his prison diary dated August 2022, Navalny wrote from solitary confinement:

It’s so hot in my cell you can’t breathe. You feel like a beached fish, longing for fresh air. However, more often than not, it’s like a cold, damp basement…always insulated, with loud music constantly playing. In theory, this is intended to prevent prisoners in different cells from shouting to each other; In practical terms, the goal is to hide the cries of the tortured.

Reuters

Alexei Navalny died in the IK-3 penal colony in the Arctic Circle on February 16

Navalnaya says she was banned from visiting or speaking to her husband for two years before his death. It says Alexei was tortured, starved and held in “horrific conditions.”

After his death, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom announced new sanctions on Russia. These sanctions included freezing the assets of six prison chiefs who ran the Arctic Circle penal colony and other sanctions on judges involved in the criminal proceedings against Navalny.

Yulia describes the international community’s reaction to his death as a “joke” and urges them to be “less afraid” of Putin. She wants to see the president locked up.

“I don’t want him to be in prison, somewhere outside, in a nice prison with a computer and delicious food… I want him to be in a Russian prison. And not only that, I want him to be in the same conditions that Alexei was in.” “But it’s very important to me.”

The Russians claim Navalny died of natural causes. Yulia believes President Putin ordered the killing.

“Vladimir Putin is responsible for my husband’s death and murder.”

She says the anti-corruption foundation she now leads in her husband’s place already has “evidence” which it will reveal when they have the “full picture”.

Getty Images

In his prison memoirs, Navalny accuses President Putin of being “an illegitimate ruler and a promoter of corruption.”

The book is as much a political work as a memoir, a rallying cry for everyone who believes in a free Russia. It is also published in Russian as an e-book and audiobook. But the publishers will not send hard copies to Russia or Belarus, because they say they cannot guarantee the book will pass through customs.

It is unclear how many Russians will dare to buy it, even in electronic form, and how much impact it could have remains in doubt.

Evgeny Feldman

Alexei Navalny at a rally after being banned from running for president in 2018

The message etched on every page is that Navalny never gives up. His Sagittarius intelligence shines through him.

He says that in the punishment cell, he gets “for free” the experience of remaining silent, eating little food, and staying away from the outside world, an experience paid for by “the rich who are suffering from a midlife crisis.”

He only once shared his feeling of being “crushed,” during the hunger strike he began in 2021 to demand medical care from civilian doctors. “For the first time, I feel emotionally and morally frustrated,” he wrote in a blog post.

But Yulia says she never worried that the system would actually break him.

“I’m pretty sure that was the point that made them finally decide to kill him. Because they just realized that he would never give up.”

Even the day before his death, when he appeared in court, Navalny was filmed joking with the judge.

See Sutta

On February 15, Navalny appeared in court via video link, where he asked the judge to send him some money.

Laughter was his “superpower,” Yulia says.

He really made fun of this regime and Vladimir Putin. “That is why Vladimir Putin hated him so much.”

The writing is filled with a great deal of sarcasm.

Navalny wrote that the book would sell better if he died:

Let’s face it, if a mysterious assassination attempt using a chemical weapon, followed by a tragic death in prison can’t move a book, it’s hard to imagine what might. The author of the book was murdered by a vile boss. What more could a marketing department ask for?

Ultimately, Patriot is also a love story about two people who are completely committed to a cause they believe in.

The cause for which Yulia has now become a symbol.

Navalny family

In his memoirs, Alexei describes Yulia as his soul mate, and says that she “hates the people who seized power in our country, perhaps more than me.”

After a visit, Navalny wrote:

“Listen, I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I think there’s a good chance I’ll never get out of here…” I whispered in her ear. They will poison me.”

“I know,” she said, nodding her head, her voice calm and firm. “I was thinking about it myself”…

It was one of those moments when you realize you’ve found the right person. Or maybe I found you.

‘Yulia Navalnaya: The Interview’ is shown on BBC Two at 1900 on Monday 21 October and on iPlayer

The Patriot will be published on Tuesday, October 22nd

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