"Shamefully, cowardly, without ever looking him in the eye or even mentioning his name,” Putin killed not only the father of her children, the closest and most beloved person she had, but also tried to kill much more, she said in an emotional speech following the death of the Kremlin’s loudest critic.
"He also wanted to kill our hopes, our freedom, and our future… to destroy and erase the best proof that Russia can be different," she added.
Three days after the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service announced Navalny’s death, his family and lawyer are still being denied access to his body. Navalnaya holds Vladimir Putin responsible for this as well.
"And just as shamefully and cowardly, they are now hiding his body, not showing it to his family, not giving it to them, but lying and waiting pitifully for the traces of Putin’s another Novichok to disappear," she claimed.
The suspicion of poisoning was reinforced by Kira Yarmysh, a close associate and spokeswoman of the late Alexei Navalny, who stated on her X profile that the Russian authorities will keep Alexei’s body to "conduct some chemical examination."
At the same time, Russian authorities have issued orders for all social media posts marked with the #Navalny tag to be removed.
"Kill and cover up the traces," wrote Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of another imprisoned opposition politician and human rights activist, Vladimir Kara-Murza, on her X profile, sharing the document from the Kremlin regime’s media and telecommunications supervisor.
Navalny has been a thorn in the side of President Putin and his associates, as through his Anti-Corruption Foundation, established in 2011, he persistently shed light on deep-seated criminality and corruption allegedly rooted in and around the Kremlin.
Through numerous investigations, he revealed strong connections between the highest echelons of Russian authority and a circle of extraordinarily wealthy and powerful individuals.
As a result, Navalny, his foundation, colleagues, and all like-minded individuals have been persecuted and many of them imprisoned. Despite various criminal charges, the West has recognized this as blatant political persecution.
Russian authorities detained Navalny in January 2021 after his return from Berlin, where he had received treatment following a Novichok poisoning attack in Russia.
He was consequently convicted to two-and-a-half, then 11, then 19 years in jail in what was believed to be politically motivated processes.
Yulia Navalnaya vowed to carry on Alexei’s mission of uncovering the misdeeds of the Russian president and his allies, stating that the initial step would be to disclose publicly the reasons behind "why Putin killed Alexei" Navalny.
"We will tell you about it soon. We will definitely find out who exactly committed this crime and how. We will tell you their names and show you their faces," said Yulia Navalnaya.
She urged the Russians to keep fighting for Alexei and themselves, "harder, more desperately and more fiercely than before."
"I know it seems impossible to do more, but we have to do more. We should all unite in a strong fist and defeat this crazy regime," she stressed.
She called on her fellow Russians not to remain silent, to persist in their fight, attend rallies, and stand by her side, citing her husband’s words: "It is not shameful to do little, it is shameful to do nothing. It is shameful to be intimidated."
"We must use every opportunity: Fight against war, against corruption, against injustice. Fight for fair elections and freedom of expression, fight to take back our country," Navalnaya said.
All of this was for Russia – the "free, peaceful, happy, and beautiful Russia of the future" that her husband, as she recounted, dreamed of.
Alexei Navalny passed away on Friday, February 16, in a prison located in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district near the Arctic Circle, while he was out walking in the prison yard.
According to prison officials, they immediately called an ambulance and did what they could, but the medical team could only declare death.
"As far as we know, at present, in accordance with all current regulations, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) conducted all necessary checks, clarifications, and so on," Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said commenting on Navalny’s death, according to the state-controlled Tass news agency.
Navalny spent 1,124 days in some of Russia’s most notorious prisons, where he was often held in solitary confinement in what is known as the ‘SHIZO’—the punishment isolation cell, considered the harshest form of legal punishment for inmates in Russian correctional facilities.
His death has caused shock and strong condemnation and criticism of the Russian regime across the Western world.