Navalny’s widow Yulia urges massive election-day protest against Putin

‘There are actually a lot of us, all those who love and support Alexei, who share his ideas and, as long as we have each other, it’s not over,’ says Ms Navalnaya

The widow of Alexei Navalny has called for a massive election-day protest against Vladimir Putin – saying that the support she has received since his death is proof that the opposition leader’s ideals live on.

Yulia Navalnaya – who has accused Putin of killing her husband, the Russian leader’s most prominent critic – said that she had drawn hope from the crowd of thousands that gathered for his funeral last week.

Mr Navalny, in one of his last public messages, had urged people to protest against Putin by voting en masse at noon local time in the 17 March presidential election, forming large crowds and overwhelming polling stations. The result of the poll is in little doubt, Putin will be re-elected, but Ms Navalnaya said there was still a choice to be made.

“What to do next? The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin,” she said in a video uploaded to YouTube. “You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station, and then turn around and go home.”

Navalny, 47, was pronounced dead on 16 February at the Arctic prison where he was serving a decades-long prison sentence on what many believe were trumped-up charges. Western leaders have lined up to lay responsibility for Navalny’s death at Putin’s doorstep. Since Mr Navalny’s burial, supporters have submerged his grave in a sea of flowers.

A photograph of the Navalnys is placed amid flowers on the Moscow grave of the Russian opposition leader (Reuters)

“Looking at you, I am convinced that everything is not in vain, and this thought gives me strength,” Ms Navalnaya said in the video. “Now you all know that there are actually a lot of us, all those who love and support Alexei, who share his ideas and, as long as we have each other, it’s not over.”

She said of the ballot protest: “This is a very simple and safe action, it cannot be prohibited, and it will help millions of people see like-minded people and realise that we are not alone ... We are surrounded by people who are also against war, against corruption and against lawlessness.”

Putin has had an iron grip on Russia for more than two decades, but there has been growing suppression of dissent in recent years, particularly in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Repressive new laws were enacted that stifled any anti-war protests and criticism of the military and the number of arrests, criminal cases and trials around dissent mushroomed. Two anti-war candidates were disqualified from this month’s election on technical grounds – and none of the three remaining candidates is critical of Putin.

Memorial, a Russian human rights group, estimates there are nearly 680 political prisoners in Russia. Another group, OVD-Info, said in November that 1,141 people are behind bars on politically motivated charges, with more than 400 others receiving other punishments and nearly 300 more under investigation.

Russian journalist Roman Ivanov, wearing a T-shirt that says ‘No war,’ stands inside a defendants’ cage (AFP/Getty)

In the latest example, a reporter for an independent Russian news outlet was sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday for articles he wrote about alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, his publication said.

Roman Ivanov, who works for the online RusNews, was convicted of publishing “fake news” about the Russian army. The charges against Ivanov stem from articles he wrote about a massacre in Ukraine’s Bucha, a UN war crimes report and Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. The articles were published on the social media accounts of “Chestnoye Korolyovskoye”, a news channel run by Mr Ivanov, where he blogged about local issues in Korolyov, the small city outside Moscow where he lives.

This crackdown has left a situation where the leading figures who oppose Putin are either dead, in jail, or – like Ms Navalnaya – forced to live outside the country. In her video, Ms Navalnaya called the upcoming elections “a complete fiction and a fake”.

But Ms Navalnaya will also understand the pressure that comes with taking up her husband’s call for the “noon against Putin” protests on 17 March. It will be a public test of how strong opposition feeling is. If people heed the call in a similar way to that of Mr Navalny’s funeral, it could turn into a big rolling protest across Russia’s 11 time zones. That would give authorities a problem, as police would have no obvious legal grounds to disperse people standing in line to vote. But if not, Putin and the Kremlin will spin it as a show of support for him.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report