Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, told the BBC in an interview on Sunday of her intention to run for president as soon as free and fair elections were once again possible in Russia.
“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. And I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible,” she told the BBC, adding that she would not return to Russia until Putin’s rule was over.
Navalnaya, who said she was prevented from visiting her husband in prison for two years before he died, said Navalny was tortured, starved, and kept in “awful conditions” and that Putin was directly responsible for his killing.
Calling the steps taken by the international community in response to her husband’s death in an Arctic penal colony in February “a joke”, Navalnaya urged Western leaders “to be a little less afraid” of Putin. Ultimately, Navalnaya added, she hoped to see Putin behind bars for his crimes, though not in a “nice prison”, but in a Russian one.
“I want him to be in the same conditions like Alexey was… it’s very important for me,” she said.
Navalnaya added that the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organisation founded by her late husband, was investigating Navalny’s killing and would reveal its findings once they had the “whole picture”.
Navalnaya’s interview was timed to promote the release of her husband’s autobiography, Patriot: A Memoir, which is being published in English and Russian on Tuesday.
One of Putin’s staunchest critics, Navalny died in an Arctic prison on 16 February. Despite Navalny admitting in his memoir that he at times felt “crushed” while serving his sentence, Navalnaya said she never worried her husband would be broken by the Putin regime. “I’m absolutely confident that is the point why finally they decided to kill him. Because they just realised that he will never give up,” she said.