The new voice of the Russian opposition has received the express support of other dissidents, even those who have carried out the bitterest confrontations with Alexei Navalny's organization in recent years.
Yulia Navalnaya (Moscow, 47 years old), announced this Monday that she will continue the work of her husband, who died suddenly in an Arctic prison just a month before the Russian presidential elections.
Sectors of the Russian democratic dissident have applauded her message for seeing in Navalny's widow a figure capable of uniting the different movements against the Kremlin.
Others, however, have remained silent.
“His statement means that
a priori
there is a leader in the Russian opposition, that Navalny's movement, everything he did, has not vanished into thin air,” stressed the controversial blogger and former member of the Yábloko party Maxim Katz, whom Navalni “sent him to hell” in September of last year in a statement for having proposed “a large opposition coalition” ahead of the presidential elections in March.
“United Russia and Putin have always stolen votes.
The question was whether we would catch them.
Now, thanks to electronic voting, it is impossible to catch it,” explained Navalny, considering that the Kremlin elections are rigged.
Despite the tense confrontation on social networks between Katz and other members of Navalni's team, the dissident has reached out to Yulia Navalnaya in a video published on his channel.
“The opposition will continue to be coordinated.
People will see that there is a person behind the opposition.
Millions of Russians who wanted to see an alternative to Putin will continue to see one.
“Yulia is safe, she is accessible,” Katz stated before highlighting that Navalni’s widow has, on the one hand, “24 years of experience at her side” and, on the other, “access to European politicians and media.” ”.
Some dissidents who have tens and hundreds of thousands of followers on their social networks showed their unequivocal support for Navalnaya.
“Yulia, strength and patience!
You can count on my support!”, former State Duma deputy Dmitri Gudkov published from exile.
Navalnaya's intervention has been applauded by the leadership of the organization that her husband founded.
“I think I've seen the video five times now.
And each time it continues to be incredibly difficult, but it gives hope,” said Georgi Alburov, head of investigations at Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Anger in the Kremlin
Navalnaya, in addition to taking her husband's baton, accused Vladimir Putin of her murder, and her words have greatly upset the Kremlin.
"No comment.
These are crude and absolutely unfounded accusations by the head of the Russian state, but given that Yulia Navalnaya was widowed literally days before, I will not comment,” the president's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, declared on Tuesday.
“They have felt very offended,” said Navalni's former spokesperson, Kira Yarmish.
Within Russia, the liberal Yabloko party, from which Navalny was expelled in 2007 for his nationalist views, has not commented on the appearance of Navalnaya, who is under a veiled threat of arrest if she returns to Russia.
The group, without presence in the Russian Parliament, tries to do politics from within Putin's system, which it accused of the death of the activist "in a prison under conditions that were essentially torture."
However, a prominent member of Yábloko, Lev Shlósberg, has warned that Navalnaya cannot be equated with another political leader with whom she has been compared these days: Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, the candidate that the Belarusian opposition presented in the 2020 presidential elections. against Alexandr Lukashenko after her husband, Sergei Tijanosvki, was arrested before the elections.
The regime would claim 80% of the votes, thus unleashing massive protests over electoral fraud.
“Political leadership is not inherited,” Shlósberg told the newspaper
Jólod
.
Yulia cannot come to Russia and do political activity here.
She cannot create any political structure in our country, she would be arrested upon entry and deprived of her freedom, and her children would be left not only without a father, but also without a mother.”
Other opposition figures in exile, such as the chess player Gari Kasparov and the businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, considered by Russians to be too distant from the internal political reality, did not speak directly about Navalnaya's intervention, although they spread it and have advocated these days for the need to be united.
“Our reaction to his murder has to be to join forces, carry out his work together and ensure that the hope of a democratic Russia does not die with him,” the former owner of the Yukos oil company said on his social networks.
For their part, other opponents who have also been imprisoned by the Kremlin, such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilia Yashin, did not comment on the step taken by his widow because the news reached them days late, although both lamented the death of his fellow dissident.
“We must stop him [Putin].
Only Russian society can do this,” wrote Kara-Murza, poisoned twice in the last decade.
In any case, a great responsibility now falls on Navalnaya.
“She will depend on what she offers,” writes political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya on her Telegram channel, detailing: “Not as the widow of a prominent politician who was tortured until her death, but as an independent figure.
Time will tell".
Pressure on the family
Navalni's mother arrived last Saturday in the city of Jarp, almost 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow, in search of the opponent's mortal remains and an explanation.
The Kremlin has denied it.
“Let me finally see my son,” Liudmila Navalnaya cried in a public recording, protected from extreme weather and tears by dark glasses, with the IK-3 prison, in the Arctic Circle, in the background.
“It is now the fifth day that I have not been able to see him, they have not given me his body, they have not even told me where he is.
I am writing to you, Vladimir Putin.
The solution to this problem depends only on you.
Let me finally see my son,” Navalny's mother demanded of the Russian president.
“I demand that you immediately hand over Alexei's body to us so that we can bury him humanely.”
Hours after the video was broadcast, the Russian Government responded with another threat to his family.
The Ministry of the Interior included the brother of the dead opponent, Oleg Navalni, on its wanted list for “criminal charges” that have not been specified.
His whereabouts have been unknown since he left the country in the fall of 2021, after being sentenced to a year in prison on charges of violating coronavirus restrictions by participating in anti-Kremlin protests.
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