Between Friday (15) and Sunday (17), Russia will hold its presidential election, in which Vladimir Putin will face front opponents to remain in the Kremlin until 2030.
Real opponents were being eliminated, through legal means or literally, and the most felt absence is that of the main name that the weakened Russian opposition produced in recent years: Alexei Navalny, who died on February 16 at the age of 47, in an Arctic prison where he served sentences of more than 30 years in prison.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, immediately assumed the role of the main voice of those dissatisfied with Putin's almost 25 years of power.
In a speech to the European Parliament two weeks after Navalny's death, she reiterated her intention, which she had expressed shortly after he was found dead, to carry on her husband's fight (who, according to her, was the victim of a murder ordered by Putin). .
“Putin must answer for what he did to my country. Putin must answer for what he did to a peaceful neighboring country [Ucrânia]. And Putin must answer for everything he did to Alexei”, he said.
Two months before his death, Navalny had asked the Russian electorate to vote for any candidate in March, except for Putin.
Last week, Yulia Navalnaya echoed this movement, calling on Russians to stage a protest against the president on the last day of voting.
“You have to go to the electoral colleges on the same day and at the same time, March 17 at noon,” wrote Yulia in a message posted on social media, in which she said that participants in the action can “vote for any candidate, except Putin.”
“You can also ruin the ballot. You can write Navalny in big letters,” she suggested. “If you don't see the point in voting, you can go to the polling station, stay there for a while, then turn around and go home,” Yulia added.
She is 47 years old and was born in Moscow. Graduated in economics, she worked in the financial market. She met Navalny, who was working as a lawyer at the time, in 1998 while on vacation in Turkey. In the year 2000, marriage came. Navalny and Yulia had two children, Daria (born in 2001) and Zakhar (in 2008).
From the beginning, their life as a couple was marked by politics: in 2000, they both joined the liberal Yabloko party, which they left a few years later.
Yulia left her career in the financial market, dedicated herself to raising her children and in 2007, when her husband had become a prominent name in the Russian opposition, she became his secretary and assistant.
For years, she kept a low profile, appearing little and making only occasional statements, but Putin's persecution of Navalny forced her to take a leading role.
In 2020, when her husband almost died from poisoning, Yulia wrote directly to Putin, asking for permission for him to be transferred for treatment in Germany.
Navalny recovered and in early 2021 returned to Russia, whereupon he was immediately arrested. “Alexei says he’s not scared, and I’m not scared either. And I ask everyone not to be afraid”, said Yulia. She would never see her husband free again.
Yulia had said that she did not intend to be a Russian equivalent of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader who became a presidential candidate after her husband was arrested before the 2020 election – dictator Alexander Lukashenko won another term in a fraudulent vote.
However, Navalny's widow suggested he may be changing his mind. “What we need is a free, peaceful and happy Russia. The wonderful Russia of the future that my husband dreamed of so much. This is the country I want to build together with you. The country that Alexei Navalny imagined,” he recently declared.
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