Yulia Navalnaya seemed fearless as she spoke to the BBC about her husband’s death, Putin’s lies and becoming a candidate in Russia’s next election.
There were also shots of Navalnaya and Lazar walking together in what could best be described as an English or French country garden. The interview appeared to take place in a little-used library of a luxury hotel. It’s the kind of place where you can have an elegant wedding.
The participants were seated in two lonely, empty chairs. These all looked like clips from very old, and usually great, interviews that took place in the 1950s and now reappear from time to time on BBC4. Or it looked like archive footage from a TG4 show about traditional music.
The stories told there were also old. Russian dissident dies in prison. Russia’s despot is ruthless: Yulia Navalnaya’s husband Alexei Navalny died mysteriously in a Russian penal colony in February.
However, the content of the interview was contemporary. Yulia Navalnaya lives in an undisclosed location, preferably hidden from Russian intelligence operatives. Navalny’s posthumous memoir is about to be published. Most of it consists of his prison diary, which was smuggled out of the penal colony, and probably from the courts where he occasionally appeared while in custody.
So, to put it maliciously, Yulia Navalnaya: The Interview (BBC One) was part of a public relations campaign. But it was also fascinating, if only because Yulia Navalnaya sometimes said it in near-perfect English.
Yulia Navalnaya seems like an ideal wife. She has a ballerina chignon and a conservative wardrobe. She was a staunch supporter of her late husband throughout the decades of his dangerous career. Male politicians everywhere would be happy to have her by their side during election campaigns.
I continue to think of Navalnaya’s beauty, grace, and majesty, which makes some of her statements so surprising in our visual age. What do you think about President Vladimir Putin’s statement that there is a good chance that Alexei Navalny took part in a prisoner exchange with the West (which ultimately took place after Alexei Navalny’s death)? When asked, she answered: Because he always lies. ”
and “I want him in jail.” She made it clear that she did not want President Vladimir Putin to go to jail in The Hague. It’s not a clean place with enough food and computers. However, it is a Russian prison.
As he himself revealed, her husband was being held in a 2.5 meter by 3 meter cell, where two other prisoners were housed. Or be placed in solitary confinement for 295 days. “And he was starving,” she said.
All her visits to him were canceled in February 2022, and that was the last time she saw him.
In the book, Navalny appears to remember a hasty conversation the two had in a prison hallway to avoid being overheard by prison authorities.
Alexei said he thought he would be “devastated” even if Putin’s regime began to collapse.
“I know,” my wife answered. “I thought so myself.”
No tears, no drama. No wonder Alexei Navalny felt he had found the right person.
And of course he was killed.
It took a lot of courage for Russians to attend his funeral. And now, eight months later, “people come to his grave every day.” She said the flowers there are always fresh.
It took a lot of courage for Russians to attend his funeral. And now, eight months later, “people come to his grave every day.” The flowers there are always fresh, she said.
Returning to Moscow is very important to her, she said.
She asked Lazar if she would run for president.
“I will participate in the election. As a candidate,” she said.
When asked about the Western world’s reaction to her husband’s death, she simply answered, “I don’t think there was any reaction.”
She was realistic about the West’s fear of Putin: “I don’t think they should be that afraid of him.”
She was sitting there wearing a beige blazer and black pants. She might be talking about her retail empire, or she might be the CEO of a charity organization. She could have become a university professor.
The most remarkable thing about her as an interviewee was that she was not intimidated not only by the Russian authorities but also by the interview itself.
She said she never worried that her husband would be crushed by Putin’s regime.
“I never asked him to stay,” he said when he decided to return to Russia after surviving a poisoning attempt in August 2020.
And although she had a message for the Russian people, she said it was difficult to think of anything her husband had not already said. For the first time she spoke in Russian.
“Don’t give up, do something every day to bring this regime to an end. One day this regime will end and our country will be free and democratic. A normal and happy country. ”
It made you think about our normal and happy democratic country. It made me think about whether it is more dangerous to believe in the existence of a normal, happy country or to believe that such a place does not exist.
