Three days on from his death, the widow of Alexei Navalny today vowed to continue the work of her husband to bring democracy to Russia and free it from Putin’s grip. Speaking on her husband’s YouTube channel for the first time, Yulia acknowledged that she ‘shouldn’t be sitting here, shouldn’t have had to record this video’ but the person who should have been, she said, ‘was murdered by Vladimir Putin’. ‘Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband Alexei Navalny,’ she said.

Russians should unite in their ‘rage, аnger, hatred’, Yulia Navalnaya said

Against a montage of images of the Russian Arctic and footage from Navalny’s rallies, Navalny’s wife declared that in murdering her husband, Putin had also tried to ‘kill our hopes, our freedom, our future’. The video featured the last picture the couple ever took together – poignantly taken exactly two years before Navalny’s death.

‘We know exactly why Putin killed Alexei three days ago,’ Yulia said, ‘Soon we will tell you all about it.’ She vowed to find out how and by whom Navalny was killed, and to publish their names and faces.

Staring straight down the camera for much of her speech, Yulia Navalnaya’s voice cracked at times with emotion. But she nevertheless managed to speak with strength and defiance. Appealing to Navalny’s supporters she called on them to ‘unite as a single strong fist’ to squarely hit Putin and his regime where it hurts. ‘[Navalny’s] love is enough for us to continue his work, for as long as it takes’. Russians should unite in their ‘rage, аnger, hatred’, she said, towards all those who ‘dared to kill our future’.

Yulia’s video ended with a clip of Navalny himself, recorded in 2021 for the documentary Navalny made after he survived being poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in the summer of 2020. Navalny had been asked what his message to the Russian public would be in the event that he was successfully killed. His answer: ‘All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. So don’t do nothing.’

Even while Navalny was behind bars, his Anti-Corruption Foundation developed a solid reputation for delivering in-depth investigations into the activities and finances of Putin and his entourage. As news of his death broke, it seemed likely it would only be a matter of time before his team would start piecing together his final hours. Whether Yulia Navalnaya will successfully manage to take up her husband’s campaigning mantle remains to be seen. But it certainly won’t be long until she, and the Anti-Corruption Foundation put forward their own version of events of what happened to Alexei Navalny last Friday.