The Kremlin goes after Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny's widow
The life of Yulia Navalnaya hasn't been easy. Her husband died while jailed for opposing the Russian government, and now the Kremlin is after her.
Back in July, the BBC reported that a Russian court had issued an arrest warrant for Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Nalvany, under charges of “participating in an extremist society”.
Navalnaya is the widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and has vowed to continue her husband’s work against the regime of Vladimir Putin.
According to The New York Times, Navalnaya lives outside Russia since 2021 and was condemned in absentia. She would immediately be arrested if she ever dared to step onto Russian territory.
Her husband, Alexei Navalny was a prominent Russian opposition leader who passed away in February on what The New York Times describes as murky circumstances in a harsh Russian penal colony.
Navalnaya was unable to attend her late husband’s funeral. France24 writes that the burial was only possible after a long battle over the body of Alexei Navalny.
Russian authorities claim that Navalny’s demise was due to natural causes. However, many who oppose Putin believe there was some foul play involved.
The New York Times writes that Navalny was serving 19 years for “trumped-up” charges of extremism after almost dying from being poisoned by the Kremlin.
Since his death, Yulia Navalnaya has sworn she would continue her late husband’s work for a “happy, beautiful Russia”, per CNN.
CNN writes that Navalnaya posted after her husband’s demise an 8-minute video claiming that Putin “killed the father of my children, Putin took away the most precious thing that was my closest and most beloved person”.
“His place is in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a cozy cell with a TV, but in Russia – in the same colony and the same 2 by 3-meter cell in which he killed Alexey,” Navalnaya wrote in a social media post, reacting to the court’s ruling.
Will Yulia Navalnaya ever vindicate her late husband? Only time will tell.