DAILY BEAST
Alexei Navalny’s wife said on Friday she did not know whether to believe the “awful” news of her husband’s death, if only because Vladimir Putin and his government were “always lying.”
But if it did turn out to be true, Yulia Navalnaya told an audience in Germany, she wanted the dictatorial Russianpresident to know that he would be held responsible—“and that day will come very soon.”
Navalnaya, a 47-year-old economist, was making a planned appearance at the high-level Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Clearly struggling to control her emotions, she told the audience that she had considered dropping out of Friday’s event. “I thought long and hard. Should I stand here before you or should I fly straight back to my children? Then I thought, what would have Alexei done in my place? And I’m sure that he would have been here, he would have been here on this stage.”
She went on: “I don’t know whether or not to believe the news, the awful news, which we are hearing only from government sources in Russia. Because for many long years, as you know, we have not been able to believe Putin or Putin’s government. They are always lying.
“But if it is true, I want Putin, those around him, Putin’s friends, and his government to know they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, my family, and my husband—and that day will come very soon.”
Navalnaya met her future husband, then a young lawyer, on a holiday in Turkey in 1998 and they married two years later—well before he became famous as a pro-democracy blogger and anti-Putin activist…
