Well-wishers cover the grave of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny with flowers every day, showing he still has “huge numbers of supporters”, his widow Yulia Navalnaya said on Tuesday.
“It was vital for the (Moscow) regime that he should feel rejected by everyone. And that’s clearly not the case,” Navalnaya, 48, told French broadcaster France Inter in an interview the day her late husband’s autobiography, “Patriot”, was published.
She highlighted the many letters Navalny received before he died in February 2024 in an Arctic penal colony, where he had been held in widely condemned harsh conditions.
“Even after his death, it’s still all going on. There are huge numbers of supporters of Alexei Navalny. And in Russia too, people visit his grave every day. His grave is covered with fresh flowers daily,” Navalnaya said.
For Navalnaya, her husband was “the only real competitor to (Russian President) Vladimir Putin”.
She herself vowed in a BBC interview on Monday to return to Russia and stand for election should Putin ever be toppled.
Navalnaya told France Inter she was “not afraid” even though she does not believe herself “100-percent safe”.
“This regime has no real plan and no real strategy… There’s no way to predict who will be attacked next,” she said.
“We have to be aware that Vladimir Putin’s regime, having begun persecuting its political opponents, having launched the war, having killed its main competitor, will stop at nothing. Nothing will stop it,” Navalnaya added.
After Navalny’s death, his wife was added to Russia’s “terrorists and extremists” blacklist in July.
She was already subject to an arrest warrant for “membership of an extremist group”.
Navalnaya lives outside Russia and has sworn to keep her husband’s opposition cause alive.
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