Moscow:

Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of hiding the truth about Navalny’s death in light of his first death anniversary, Al Jazeera reported.

Al Jazeera noted that Alexei Navalny’s death was officially attributed to natural causes, in an Arctic penal colony last February. Supporters of the late leading Russian opposition leader are commemorating the one-year anniversary of his death by visiting his grave in Moscow, Al Jazeera reported.

“I am grateful to everyone who remembers Alexei, who talks about him, writes about him, who comes to the cemetery. I am grateful to those who have been supporting me this whole year. Your letters, your hugs when we meet, this is what does not let me forget why Alexei did this and why I’m doing this. If so many good people are on one side, we cannot help but win”, Yulia Navalnaya said in a video message as shared by Al Jazeera.

She further said in the video message, “Even now a year after his death he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is trying to erase Alexei’s name from our memory to hide the truth about the murder, to make us come to terms, but he will not succeed.”

“The pain we feel makes us stronger and this year has shown that we are stronger than we thought ourselves”, the video message added.

Alexei Navalny was Russia’s high-profile opposition leader who died on February 16, 2024.

Navalny died in the penal colony in Siberia, where he was serving a 19-year sentence after being found guilty of causing an extremist community, financing extremist activists and various other crimes in August, according to CNN report.

He was already serving sentences of 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other charges. He had denied the allegations and called it politically motivated.

Navalny was Russia’s high-profile opposition leader and spent years criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin. His death came weeks before Russia’s presidential elections, CNN reported.

The European Union (EU) also shared a statement on the death anniversary of Alexei Navalny.

In the statement by the EU, it said, “President Putin and the Russian authorities bear ultimate responsibility” for the death of Alexei Navalny.

“As Russia intensifies its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, it also continues its internal repression, targeting those who stand for democracy. Alexei Navalny gave his life for a free and democratic Russia. Today, his lawyers remain unjustly imprisoned, together with hundreds of political prisoners. Russia must immediately and unconditionally release Alexei Navalny’s lawyers and all political prisoners”, the statement added.

“Since 2020, the EU has sanctioned those responsible for Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, arbitrary arrest, prosecution and politically motivated sentencing. In 2024, the EU adopted a Russia-specific human rights-focused sanctions regime targeting those who commit human rights violations and repression”, the statement said.

In the statement’s conclusion, the European Union gave a call to Russia “end its brutal repression of civil society, media, and opposition members, and to comply with international law.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

In a memoir released eight months after he died in prison, Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny never loses faith that his cause is worth suffering for while also acknowledging he wishes he could have written a very different book.

“There is a mishmash of bits and pieces, a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary,” Navalny writes in “Patriot”, which was published Tuesday (October 22, 2024) and is, indeed, a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary.

“I so much do not want my book to be yet another prison diary. Personally I find them interesting to read, but as a genre — enough is surely enough.”

The final 200 pages of Navalny’s 479-page book do, in some ways, have the characteristics of other prison diaries or of such classic Russian literature as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” He tracks the boredom, isolation, exhaustion, suffering and absurdity of prison life, while working in asides about everything from 19th century French literature to Billie Eilish. But “Patriot” also reads as a testament to a famed dissident’s extraordinary battle against despair as the Russian authorities gradually increase their crackdown against him, and even shares advice on how to confront the worst and still not lose hope.

“The important thing is not to torment yourself with anger, hatred, fantasies of revenge, but to move instantly to acceptance. That can be hard,” he writes. “The process going on in your head is by no means straightforward, but if you find yourself in a bad situation, you should try this. It works, as long as you think everything through seriously.”

In recent years, Navalny had become an international symbol of resistance. A lawyer by training, he started out as an anti-corruption campaigner but soon turned into a politician with aspirations for public office and eventually became the main challenger to Russia’s longtime President, Vladimir Putin.

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, oversaw the book’s completion. In a promotional interview for “Patriot,” she told the BBC that she would run for president if she ever returned to Russia — an unlikely move with Mr. Putin in power, Navalnaya acknowledged. She has been arrested in absentia in Russia on charges of involvement with an extremist group. Mr. Putin “needs to be in a Russian prison, to feel everything that not just my husband but all the prisoners in Russia” feel, Navalnaya said during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Editorial: Poison and prison: On political importance of Navalny

Navalnaya has vowed to continue her late husband’s fight. She has recorded regular video addresses to her supporters and has been meeting with Western leaders and top officials, advocating for Russians who oppose Mr. Putin and his war in Ukraine. She had two children with her husband, who in his book writes of his immediate attraction to her and their enduring bond, praising Navalnaya as a soulmate who “could discuss the most difficult matters with me without a lot of drama and hand-wringing.”

During the first section of his book, Navalny reflects on the fall of the Soviet Union, his disenchantment with 1990s Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, his early crusades against corruption, his entry into public life, and his discovery that he did not need to look far for a politician “who would undertake all sorts of needed, interesting projects and cooperate directly with the Russian people.”

“I wanted and waited, and one day I realized I could be that person myself,” he wrote.

His vision of a “beautiful Russia of the future,” where leaders are freely and fairly elected, official corruption is tamed, and democratic institutions work — as well as his strong charisma and sardonic humor — earned him widespread support across the country’s 11 time zones. He had young, energetic activists by his side — a team that resembled “a fancy startup” rather than a clandestine revolutionary operation, according to his memoir. “From the outside, we looked like a bunch of Moscow hipsters,” he writes, and together they put out colorful, professionally produced videos exposing official corruption. Those garnered millions of views on YouTube and prompted mass rallies even as the authorities cracked down harder on dissent.

The authorities responded to Navalny’s growing popularity by levying multiple charges against him, his allies and even family members. They jailed him often and shut down his entire political infrastructure — the Foundation for Fighting Corruption he started in 2011 and a network of several dozen regional offices.

In 2020, Navalny survived a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin, which denied involvement. He describes it in great detail in the very beginning of the book, recounting, “This is too much, and I’m about to die.” His family and allies fought for him to be airlifted to Germany for treatment, and after recovering there for five months, he returned to Russia, only to be arrested and sent to prison, where he would spend the last three years of his life.

In the memoir, Navalny recalls telling his wife while still hospitalized in Berlin that “of course” he will go back to Russia.

The pressure on him continued behind bars, intensifying after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and ratcheted its clampdown on dissent to unprecedented levels. In messages he was able to get out of prison, Navalny described harrowing conditions of solitary confinement, where he was placed for months on end for various minor infractions prison officials relentlessly accused him of, sleep deprivation, meager diet and lack of medical help. In October 2023, three of his lawyers were arrested and two more were put on a wanted list.

In December 2023, the authorities transferred Navalny to a penal colony of the highest security level in the Russian penitentiary system in a remote town above the Arctic Circle. In February 2024, 47-year-old Navalny suddenly died there; the circumstances and cause of his death still remain a mystery. Yulia Navalnaya and his allies say the Kremlin killed him, while the authorities argue that Navalny died of “natural causes” but wouldn’t reveal any details of what happened.

Tens of thousands of Russians attended his funeral on the outskirts of Moscow in March in a rare show of defiance in a country where any street rally or even single pickets often result in immediate arrests and prison. For days afterward, people brought flowers to the grave, and a handful even came Tuesday.

“I dream of as many people as possible reading this book, because it seems to me that everyone will learn something new about Alexei. (Everyone) will laugh and cry a bit. He was so cool: strong and brave, kind and funny. The best. And the dearest,” Yulia Navalnaya said on X.

Navalny’s team has said the book will be available in Russian, the language he wrote it in, but shipping to his homeland and its neighbor Belarus won’t be possible “as we cannot guarantee delivery and the absence of problems at customs.”

The Kremlin and Russian state media ignored the release, much as they ignored many other developments related to Navalny, whose name Putin and other top officials almost never uttered in public.

London:

The wife of late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said on Thursday that investigators had told her his death in an Arctic prison colony in February was caused by a “combination of diseases” – a finding she rejected as preposterous.

Yulia Navalnaya said she would demand a criminal investigation of her husband’s death, which she considers to be murder, and that Navalny’s team would continue to conduct its own probe.

Navalny, 47, died suddenly on Feb. 16, depriving the Russian opposition of its most charismatic and popular leader. He had been serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on charges he said were rigged in order to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has strongly rejected his supporters’ accusation that Putin had him murdered.

Posting on social media, Yulia Navalnaya published a copy of a three-page official letter she received last week stating there were no criminal circumstances surrounding her husband’s death and therefore no grounds to open an investigation.

The letter was signed by Alexander Varapayev, the same investigative official who, according to Navalnaya, initially refused to hand over her husband’s body to his mother unless she agreed to have him buried in secret – a demand she rejected.

The letter said Navalny had fallen ill suddenly while walking in a prison yard, and was taken to a medical unit where staff tried unsuccessfully to save him with “indirect heart massage and artificial respiration”. An emergency team was sent for, but was also unable to revive him.

Navalnaya said that version was a lie and a cover-up.

“We know very well that when Alexei became ill, he was taken not to the medical unit, but back to the punishment cell. That he was dying there, alone. That he was taken to the medical unit already unconscious. That in the last minutes before his death he complained of acute pain in his stomach. Why is all this not in the resolution of the Investigative Committee?” she wrote.

She did not say how she and her husband’s supporters had established the sequence of events she described.

LIST OF DISEASES

The official letter said the cause of Navalny’s death was a “combination of diseases” which it presented as a long list, ranging from hypertension and pancreatitis to damage to his vertebrae and the presence of herpes virus in his lungs and spleen.

It said the trigger for his death was a critical increase in blood pressure that had upset the rhythm of his heart and overloaded the pressure in its chambers.

Navalnaya said “every third person in Russia” had chronic diseases of the kind listed by the report, and “people don’t die suddenly from something like that in the space of an hour”. She also challenged the diagnosis of heart arrhythmia.

“Tell me, how did you discover this arrhythmia during the autopsy? Heart rhythm disturbances cannot be determined posthumously, and during his lifetime Alexei did not have any heart diseases,” she said.

She said Navalny had been lively and cheerful when he appeared by video link at a court hearing on the eve of his death. And if he had really been suffering from so many diseases, she demanded, then “why was such a sick person sent to a punishment cell and kept there for months?”

Navalnaya demanded the opening of a criminal case, though she said there would be no investigation as long as Putin remained in power.

“Therefore, we will continue to investigate ourselves,” she wrote, urging prison staff and officials to contact her team confidentially and promising to pay for any new information.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moscow:

Russia on Thursday added opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya to its list of “terrorists” and “extremists,” two days after it issued an arrest warrant for the exiled dissident.

Navalnaya has vowed to continue the work of her husband Alexei Navalny, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s main opponent who died in an Arctic prison in unclear circumstances in February.

Her personal details appeared Thursday in an online blacklist maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, a state agency designed to combat the financing of people and organisations Moscow deems “terrorists” or involved in “extremist activity”.

Russian officials frequently apply such labels to opposition figures and those who campaign against the Kremlin or its offensive on Ukraine.

Navalny’s organisations were outlawed in Russia and are labelled “extremist”.

The opposition leader himself was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of “extremism.”

A court in the capital Moscow on Tuesday ordered Navalnaya arrested in absentia, also on charges of “extremism.”

Following her husband’s death, Navalnaya, 47, vowed to take up his work and has lobbied against Putin’s government from abroad.

“If they’re making such a fuss, then Yulia is doing everything right,” Kira Yarmysh, Navalnaya’s press secretary said on social media after she was added to the blacklist.

Navalnaya, an economist, stood by her husband as he galvanised mass protests in Russia, flying him out of the country when he was poisoned before defiantly returning to Moscow with him in 2021, knowing he would be jailed.

Like much of Russia’s opposition, Navalnaya lives in exile and would be detained if she set foot in Russia.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File picture of Yulia Navalnaya, widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
| Photo Credit: AP

A court in Russia ordered the arrest of the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a hearing Tuesday that was conducted in absentia as part of a sweeping Kremlin crackdown on the opposition.

Yulia Navalnaya, who lives abroad, would face arrest if and when she returns to Russia.

Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ruled to arrest Navalnaya on charges of alleged involvement in an extremist group.

Navalny, the fiercest political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he had condemned as politically motivated. Authorities said he became ill after a walk but have otherwise given no details on Navalny’s death.

Navalny was imprisoned after returning to Moscow in January 2021 from Germany, where he had been recuperating from the 2020 nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Ms. Navalnaya has accused Mr. Putin of her husband’s death and vowed to continue his activities. Russian officials have vehemently denied involvement in Navalny’s poisoning and death.

Ms. Navalnaya mocked the court’s order on social media platform X, saying that it’s Mr. Putin who should be be prosecuted. Her spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, described the court’s ruling as a recognition of her “merits.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz noted on X that Ms. Navalnaya is carrying on her husband’s legacy and denounced the Moscow court’s ruling as “an arrest warrant against the desire for freedom and democracy.”

Russian authorities haven’t specified the charges against Navalnaya. They appear to relate to authorities designating Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption as an extremist organization. The 2021 court ruling that outlawed Navalny’s group forced his close associates and team members to leave Russia.

A number of journalists have been jailed on similar charges in recent months in relation to their coverage of Navalny.

The Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and ordinary Russians critical of it has intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

After the shock of Alexei Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, Russian dissidents in exile are vowing to pick up the pieces and press on with their battle against President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

“Of course we will cry in our bedrooms and bathrooms but publicly we’ll definitely continue fighting against the regime with all our methods,” Evgeny Nasyrov, coordinator of the Free Navalny campaign in Germany, said.

For Mr. Nasyrov, Opposition supporters must keep up the fight because seeing them “demotivated and scattered around” is exactly what Mr. Putin wants.

Mr. Nasyrov, who left Russia shortly before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, is part of Navalny’s team of Opposition supporters doing what they can to campaign from outside Russia.

He has been pounding the phone lines to Russia, trying to rouse people to head to the polls at noon on March 17, the final day of voting in the presidential election, in a show of strength against Mr. Putin.

“Even if people won’t vote, even if they’re not Russian, we want there to be crowds,” said Mr. Nasyrov, who is also urging people in Russia to talk about the war in Ukraine.

‘Bigger challenge’

But while continuing the movement’s activities is one thing, redefining what it stands for without Navalny as a figurehead will be a bigger challenge.

The 47-year-old was in many ways the only unifying force for a group of disparate figures bound together only by their Opposition to Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Marat Gelman, a Russian art collector and gallerist who now lives in Berlin, said his emotions had been running high since the news of Navalny’s death. “At first I thought I should stop thinking about Russia, concentrate on my work and think about how to organise a new life,” the longtime Kremlin critic said. But after the initial shock had subsided, Mr. Gelman found himself inspired by the courage of Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya.

Three days after her husband’s death, Ms. Navalnaya posted a video vowing to continue her husband’s fight “for the freedom of our country”, rekindling the hopes of many Russians.

“Yulia has changed everything,” said Mr. Gelman, who believes that Navalnaya could be an even more powerful figure than her husband, because she is a woman.

“Putin’s machismo works well with men, but it does not work with women. The face of anti-war Russia must be that of a woman,” he said.

“She can rely on my support,” said exiled opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov, currently travelling around Europe to establish contacts with the European authorities.

“I hope this strategy will be the motivating point to coordinate our activity all together,” he said.

Mr. Gudkov, who was a guest at Navalny’s wedding and once co-led demonstrations with him, said he hoped as many Russians as possible would heed the call to rally on March 17.

“We can’t influence numbers in the ballot, but we can show queues of people.” he said. “I hope that if millions of people gather then it could undermine the legitimacy of Putin,” he added.

Although the initiative was not the brainchild of Navalny himself, he and his closest allies endorsed it in a rare display of unity for an often fractured Opposition.

Back in Russia, jailed Opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza on Thursday also urged Russians to keep fighting for democracy despite Navalny’s death.

“I still cannot comprehend what has happened, rationally or emotionally. But if we give in to gloom and despair, that’s exactly what they want. We have no right to do that, we owe it to our fallen comrades,” Kara-Murza said.

Navalny’s confidence

Sergei Guriev, a former economic adviser to the Russian government who now lives in exile in France, said he exchanged letters with Navalny before his transfer from the prison near Moscow to the remote jail where he died.

What struck him the most was “his confidence that Russia should be and will be a democratic and peaceful country”, Mr. Guriev said.

Mr. Nasyrov recalled meeting Navalny in 2017, when he came to open a regional office for his movement in Chelyabinsk.

“He came only with one bodyguard, it was not enough in the crowd. I asked, ‘Are you not concerned about your security?’ He joked, ‘Will you not defend me?’”