In a dramatic video announcement, four days after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, vowed to continue his work and lead the fight against President Vladimir Putin.
Historically, over more than 23 years of marriage, Navalnaya tended to avoid the spotlight as her husband crusaded against Russian corruption, built a political machine, campaigned for mayor of Moscow, sought to challenge Putin for the presidency in 2018 and cultivated a worldwide following with YouTube videos garnering tens of millions of views. Navalnaya preferred to work from the wings, providing quiet counsel and unwavering support to her husband while guarding the privacy of their two children, Daria and Zakhar.
After his sudden death, however, Navalnaya quickly seized the role of successor, delivering two blistering speeches condemning Putin and his supporters as murderers and cowards, and vowing to fight for her husband’s dream of a normal, democratic and happy Russia.
“I shouldn’t have been in this place,” she declared in her video statement Monday. “I shouldn’t have recorded this video. There should be another person in my place, but this person was killed by Vladimir Putin.”
Her face ashen, she continued: “Putin killed the father of my children, Putin took away the most precious thing I had, the closest and most beloved person — but Putin also took Navalny from you.”
After Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in August 2020 and since his subsequent arrest upon returning to Russia in January 2021, Navalnaya took on a more public role — first appealing personally to Putin to allow her husband to be flown to Germany for medical treatment, and joining him for interviews after his recovery. Her most public appearance was an acceptance speech at the Oscars in 2023 when the film “Navalny” won “best documentary.”
Navalnaya already has experience with the challenges — and dangers — she will face as an opposition leader. She has been arrested at protests along with her husband. And in July 2020 while the couple was on vacation in Kaliningrad she was apparently poisoned herself, likely with the same chemical agent used on Navalny a month later, in an attack almost certainly meant for her husband.
She had last seen her husband in person two years ago, at a court proceeding in February 2022. Navalnaya had left Russia after her husband’s arrest in 2021, and was reportedly living in Germany. Last summer, Russian state media channel RT reported that Navalnaya would be arrested at the airport, like her husband, if she tried to enter the country.
Yulia Abrosimova was born in Moscow on July 24, 1976, seven weeks and a day younger than her husband. Her parents divorced when she was young and her mother remarried but Navalnaya rarely spoke about them.She has a degree in economics from the Plekhanov University of Economics, and, like Navalny, was once a member of Yabloko, a center-left, progressive-minded political party. She briefly worked at a bank in Moscow, then at a foreign trade company.She met Alexei Navalny while on vacation with friends at a resort in Turkey in the summer of 1998 and found they had a shared interest in politics. They married in August 2000, and had two children — a daughter, Daria, born in 2001, and a son, Zakhar, born in 2008. “I remember she amazed me at the first meetings: blonde, beautiful, and even knows the names of all the ministers,” Navalny once said.Navalnaya mostly did not work outside the home and instead focused on safeguarding their children as Navalny was pursued by authorities. Their home was frequently searched, the family was constantly surveilled by security agents, and Navalny was often in jail or under house arrest. “My main task is to ensure that, no matter what, nothing in our family changes,” she said in an interview, “so that children remain children and the house remains home.”The family lived mainly in a modest apartment in a neighborhood on the southern edge of Moscow, but also briefly in the city of Kirov, while Navalny was an informal adviser to the governor in 2009-10, in New Haven, Conn., for a fellowship at Yale in 2010, and in Germany in late 2020 as Navalny recovered from the poisoning.
‘First lady of the opposition’
Whatever reluctance she may have had about a public life, Navalnaya was quickly labeled the “first lady of the Russian opposition” — a label she rejected — and her evidently close, affectionate relationship with her husband, and their frequent appearances with their children, were a source of fascination and delight for his supporters. The family also offered a stark contrast to Putin, whose daughters lived under different surnames and who, after divorcing his wife, Lyudmila, has led a secretive personal life, with reports that he fathered children with at least two other women.
Navalnaya has linked the absence of Russian politician’s wives in public to a patriarchal society and corruption. “The wives of officials do not stand hand in hand with them at rallies, but are used to legalize huge shadow incomes,” she said in an interview with Afisha.
In her first TV interview, in 2013, Navalnaya told Russia’s TV Rain: “I didn’t marry a promising lawyer, and I didn’t marry an opposition leader. I married a young man named Alexei. I married a man with whom it was clear from the very beginning that sharp turns were possible.”
The Navalnys would often embrace during his never-ending court cases, and perhaps the best-known tender moment occurred when they flew back to Russia in 2021, and he kissed her as he was about to be arrested at Sheremetyevo International Airport. From prison, Navalny sent her love letters, often positing the missives on his social media.
His last post on Instagram, a day before his death, read: “Babe, we have everything like in a song: cities between us, airport runway lights, blue blizzards and thousands of kilometers. But I feel you are near me every second, and I love you more and more.”
While laying flowers for Navalny at a memorial on Monday evening, Tanya, 37, who works at a publishing house in Moscow, described Navalnaya as Navalny’s “true collaborator.”
“They’ve always been such an amazing couple. First of all, they never hid anything. In Russian politics, we don’t know anything about our politicians; they hide everything. And these two are as open as possible,” said Tanya, who did not wish to provide her last name for fear of repercussions. “It’s not just that she was always with him and that no one ever saw any weakness in her; she also never talked him out of anything. Her support and courage has just always been constant.”
What are her political views?
Navalnaya, by all accounts, shares her husband’s political views. Navalny even joked that she was more radical in her opposition to the regime. “You criticized me for being radical; I wish you heard Yulia talk about politics,” Navalny told Russian YouTube journalist Yuri Dud during a joint interview the couple did while he was still recovering in Germany. “You would’ve realized I’m very moderate.”
Pressed by his wife to name specific issues, Navalny said, “Well, toward certain people.” He also described how she had to fight to get him released for treatment, adding, “When you are not a politician and you encounter the very darkness opposing your family, it probably radicalizes you emotionally.”
Navalnaya was always Navalny’s closest confidante, conferring on all of his projects and shaping his public image. Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats, who served as something of a political godmother to Navalny, often said that as a politician he was “two people: Yulia and Alexei” and noted that Yulia served as his editor in chief and read everything he wrote before it was published.
In a post after Navalnaya’s announcement on Monday, Albats repeated the sentiment. “I always thought: Politician Alexei Navalny is two people: Yulia and Alexei Navalny. As Yulia said in her statement, half of her was killed. And this is very accurate: Alyosha was killed. And if anyone can continue his work, it is Yulia. Thank her for her courage and God bless her.”
In 2023, when a film about Navalny won an Oscar for best documentary, Navalnaya made a short speech that was criticized for her failure to mention the war in Ukraine.
“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison only for defending democracy. Alexei, I dream of the day when you become free and our country becomes free,” she said, dressed in a red gown, her children beside her.
In a subsequent interview with Der Spiegel, she touched on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but did not go into much detail. “Putin will stop at nothing to maintain power and money,” she said. “After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I think this became obvious to everyone. It’s impossible to forgive.”
What is she like in a crisis?
After Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in August 2020, Navalnaya jumped into action, dashing to the airport to catch a flight to the Siberian city of Omsk where he was hospitalized in a medically induced coma. Hospital officials would not let her see him, saying she had no proof they were married.
Navalnaya issued a personal appeal — phrased more like a demand — to Putin to allow her to fly her husband to Germany for urgent treatment. “He’s not in a very good condition and we can’t trust this hospital,” Navalnaya told reporters outside at the time. “We demand they release him to us so we can treat him in an independent hospital with doctors whom we trust.”
In the interview with Yuri Dud, Navalnaya said that after the poisoning she quickly realized it was vital that she did not fall apart, as an example for the rest of Navalny’s team.
“I understood that I couldn’t relax, because I’m his closest person, I’m his wife, if I get unstuck, then everyone will start to get unstuck one by one. And I tried to pull myself together,” she said.
A month later, Navalny published a heart-wrenching “post about love” dedicated to his wife, whom he credited with saving his life.
“I was coming out of the coma, but I didn’t recognize anyone, I didn’t understand what was going on … I was spending all my time waiting for Her to come,” he wrote. “It was unclear who She is, exactly. I didn’t know what she looks like either … But I knew she was good, and when she left, I’d get sad and start waiting for her all over again.”
“I don’t doubt for a second that there’s a scientific explanation for his. I was catching the timbre of my wife’s voice, my brain was releasing dopamine, and was feeling better. Each visit became literally therapeutic,” he continued. “Now I know for sure simply from experience: love heals and brings people back to life. Yulia, you saved me, and let them put that in the neurobiological textbooks.”
What will she be like as a leader?
In one rare interview — with Harper’s Russian edition just before Navalny’s return to Russia — Navalnaya reiterated that she had no intention of taking on a political role.
“Although I do have my convictions, especially when it comes to the role of women. When we talk about the laws that women desperately need, the first is income inequality,” she said, highlighting in particular the plight of young, single mothers “desperately fighting for survival.”
Some are now drawing comparisons between Navalnaya and the Belarusian opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took her husband’s place as a candidate in the 2020 presidential election against Alexander Lukashenko after her husband, who had intended to run, was imprisoned.
When the Navalny’s returned to Russia in 2021 and Alexei was arrested, Yulia was detained for participating in an unsanctioned rally, but was later released. “Life has strengthened my will. Because there is no other way to be your husband’s wife,” she said in a later interview. “The main thing is that I believe in what Alexei is doing.”
Some mourners interviewed on Monday night were unsure what to make of Navalnaya’s announcement.
“I don’t know what kind of leader she is. Navalny was a leader. In memory of her husband, people may follow her as well. But for women it’s more complicated of course,” said Alla, 60.
Veronika, 42, an illustrator from Moscow, said that Navalnaya had given her a slither of hope. “For some reason, I have a little more faith in women,” she said.
“There is an idea that a woman cannot be a leader in Russia. I don’t believe in it. I think it just takes a little bit of time and everyone will understand that women are the best leaders,” said Tanya.
Irina Fatyanova, the former head of Navalny’s political office in St. Petersburg, met Navalnaya only once — outside Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where the plane carrying Navalny back to Russia from Germany in 2021 was diverted in a bid to prevent supporters from greeting him.
“Yulia went out to the crowd of journalists and supporters and thanked everyone who managed to get from Vnukovo to Sheremetyevo,” Fatyanova said. “She seems she is made of steel, and inside has a huge heart full of hope and love.”