Yulia Navalnaya is in the global news. The lady has vowed to continue the fight of her dead husband Alexei Navalny for a “free Russia” and called upon supporters to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin with greater might and fury than ever.
Who is Yulia Navalnaya? Here is what we know about her.
Family & Childhood
Yulia Navalnaya was born Yulia Abrosimova on June 24, 1976, in Moscow. Her father, Boris Abrosimov, was a scientist and her mother was a government employee. She is a graduate of the prestigious Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. Yulia Navalnaya has worked for some time as a banker in Moscow.
Life As Yulia Navalnaya
She met her future husband while on holiday in Turkey in 1998. Alexei Navalny was a young lawyer at the time and he was very impressed by her ability to name all of Russia’s the-then ministers by heart as per an article in the Sobesednik newspaper that appeared about the couple in 2020.
They got married two years later. Yulia Navalnaya became a stay-at-home mother to the couple’s children, Daria, born in 2001, and Zakhar, born in 2008.
Both Yulia and Alexei were once members of the liberal Yabloko party.
Yulia Navalnaya frequently appeared supporting her husband at rallies, on the campaign trail and in the courtroom during his many trials.
She attended his first significant criminal trial in Kirov in 2013, sitting calmly behind him as he faced 10 years in prison for allegedly stealing from a timber firm while working for Kirov’s liberal governor.
“These bastards will never see our tears,” she said after Alexei Navalny was handed a five-year sentence. Quite unexpectedly, he was released the next day following protests, and his sentence was later suspended.
Yulia Navalnaya has been by her husband’s side throughout his subsequent Moscow mayoral campaign in 2013, appearing on stage in front of a crowd of thousands to urge Muscovites to vote for him.
Navalny’s Poisoning
Yulia Navalnaya played a major role in her husband’s evacuation in August 2020 from Russia to a German hospital, where he underwent treatment for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.
Yulia Navalnaya sent a letter to the Kremlin directly appealing for it to intervene and for it to grant permission for Alexei Navalny to be allowed to fly out of Russia on medical grounds.
The Kremlin said in response that it did not receive an official request for Alexei Navalny’s transfer from his representatives, but that it had got information about the message from social networks.
Alexei Navalny’s doctors in Omsk repeatedly kept delaying his transfer citing poor health as an impediment to travel. Two days after Alexei Navalny’s hospitalization, a plane organized by a Germany-based nonprofit arrived to take him to Berlin.
Arrested Several Times
Yulia Navalnaya has been arrested multiple times at protests related to her husband and his activist work.
She was detained twice in January 2021 in Moscow at rallies held in support of Alexei Navalny after he was jailed on returning to Russia. “Sorry for the poor quality. Very bad light in the paddy wagon,” she captioned a selfie posted that she posted to her Instagram account.
She was later fined 20,000 roubles ($265) by a court.
Governmental Pressure Proved To Be An Emotional Toll At Times
The government’s constant pressure on her husband and her family was not always easy for Yulia Navalnaya to manage. Alexei Navalny told Reuters in 2017, ahead of his 2018 presidential run, that security services were tracking his wife and his children, then aged 15 and nine.
“Cars are constantly passing by. I don’t even pay attention to it anymore, but Yulia is really bothered by it,” Alexei Navalny said.
“The main feeling I had was that I shouldn’t relax or show weakness,” Yulia Navalnaya said in an interview conducted in Germany after her husband’s poisoning. “If I fall apart, everyone will fall apart.”
Future Plans
Yulia Navalnaya released a video message on earlier this week. She spoke in Russian. It was titled “I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny”. Currently living outside the country, she said she wants to “build a free Russia”, but has yet to spell out her plans or to say where she will be based.
As of the latest reports, we know that Yulia Navalnaya’s social media account X has been suspended.
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