The most virulent opponent of Vladimir Putin, Alexeï Navalny was arrested and imprisoned in June 2019. This Friday, February 16, he died in a penal colony located in the Arctic.
His wife, Yulia Navalnaïa, was quick to react, accusing the Russian president.
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Cry of the heart
Present in Germany on behalf of the Munich Security Conference, Alexeï Navalny's wife declared, very moved, to hold Putin "personally responsible", before adding that it was necessary that "all his staff, all those around him, his entire government, his friends, know that they will be punished for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband.
They will be brought to justice and that day will come soon.”
Yulia Navalnaïa then continued, shaken but stubborn: “I asked myself if I should stay here in front of you or if I should return to my children.
I asked myself what Alexei would have done in my place and I am sure that he would have stood here on this stage,” she confided, beginning her short statement, greeted by long applause from the participants in this conference which brings together each year the elite of world diplomacy.
“I would like to appeal to the international community, to all the people of the world, to come together and fight against this evil, against this horrible regime that is raging today in Russia, and so that this regime and Vladimir Putin be held personally responsible for all the atrocities they have committed in our country in recent years,” she declared, urging the different countries present to hold the Russian president accountable.
In Munich, Yulia Navalnaya met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who offered his condolences and affirmed that Russia was “responsible for the death of the Russian opponent”.
A tribute that Alexeï Navalny's mother “did not want to hear”, she who had “seen [her] son on the 12th at the colony
[of the prison, Editor's note]
, we met.
He was alive, healthy and happy,” she wrote on Facebook shortly after discovering his death, according to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.