Yulia Navalnaya announced that she would step in to continue her husband’s long campaign to rid Russia of dictatorship and corruption. She stepped in because her husband encouraged everyone to engage, not to be afraid.

RIGA, Latvia — Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable opponent, vowed on Monday to carry on her husband’s crusade against the Russian regime, striving to build “a free, peaceful, happy Russia, a beautiful Russia of the future, which my husband dreamed of so much.”

Navalnaya, 47, made her announcement in a video statement on YouTube, in which she accused Russian authorities of fatally poisoning Navalny in the Arctic prison where he died suddenly on Friday at age 47.

“Putin did not only murder the person, Alexei Navalny,” she said, clad in black and her voice occasionally trembling during the dramatic video address. “He wanted, along with him, to kill our hope, our freedom, our future.”

Navalnaya also accused the Russian authorities of refusing to hand over Navalny’s body to his 69-year-old mother so they could cover up the cause of death.


“They lie pathetically, and wait for the traces of another Putin’s Novichok to disappear there,” said Navalnaya, referring to the class of nerve agent that international investigators said Russian security agents used in an August 2020 attempt to assassinate her husband.

“My husband could not be broken, and that’s exactly why Putin killed him, in the most cowardly way,” she continued. “He did not have the courage to look him in the eye or even say his name. And now they are also cowardly, hiding his body, not showing him to his mother, not giving it to her.”


Three days after Navalny’s sudden death Friday, the location of his body was still unclear on Monday and his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was again rebuffed by morgue officials in the Arctic town of Salekhard, 33 miles from the prison colony where he died, Navalny’s press secretary said.

Navalny’s grieving family and political team have demanded the return of his remains since Saturday but have faced an extended, almost surreal, struggle to recover his body or even to establish its location — with Russian officials seemingly determined to obstruct any independent investigation into the cause of death and delay a funeral.


Navalnaya was in Brussels on Monday to address European Union foreign ministers who invited her in a show of solidarity and as a follow-up to her emotional appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Friday shortly after the news broke of her husband’s death.
At the meeting in Brussels, she sat next to the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, surrounded by diplomats and officials, looking exhausted but determined.


“We expressed the E.U.’s deepest condolences to Yulia Navalnaya,” Borrell posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Vladimir Putin & his regime will be held accountable for the death of Alexei.” … “As Yulia said, Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin,” Borrell continued. “We will continue our support to Russia’s civil society & independent media.”


Navalnaya also met with European Council President Charles Michel.


In her video statement, Navalnaya vowed that she and her husband’s team would find out those directly responsible for her husband’s death and expose exactly how it was done. “We’ll name names and show faces. But the main thing we can do for Alexei and for ourselves is to keep fighting,” she said.
“I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny,” Navalnaya proclaimed, adding:

“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 that I have no right to give up. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s cause.”


She also directly addressed one of the resonant questions in the West about her husband: Why did he return to Russia in 2021 after recovering from the poisoning attack in Germany, risking likely arrest and possible death, when he could have lived peacefully with his family in exile?


“He could not,” she said, fighting back tears. “Alexei loved Russia more than anything else in the world, loved our country, loved you. He believed in us, in our strength, in our future and in the fact that we deserve the best.”