Yulia Navalny says she will return to Russia to run for president

Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has proclaimed she will return to Russia to run for president. 

Navalnaya, 48, told the BBC she intends to fight for control of the country, in the wake of her husband’s death eight months ago in the infamous Polar Wolf prison, located in Arctic Yamalo-Nenets region. 

Since the passing of Navalny, an avowed anti-corruption campaigner who was seen as the biggest threat to Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on Russia, no single leader has emerged to unite the country’s disparate opposition and there has been significant infighting between different Russian dissident groups abroad.

‘My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. And I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible,’ Navalnaya told the BBC.

When the time is right, ‘I will participate in the elections… as a candidate,’ she was quoted as saying by the BBC.

She said that she was planning on waiting until Putin was no longer in power before making any official political moves. 

Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison, supposedly on the orders of Vladimir Putin (pictured) 

Navalny (pictured) was an avowed anti-corruption campaigner 

While Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since the last day of 1999, is still in power, Navalnaya said she would not return. Putin turned 72 this month.

Navalny, 47, died suddenly on Feb. 16, depriving the Russian opposition of its most charismatic and popular leader.

He had been serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on charges he said were rigged in order to silence his criticism of Putin.

The Kremlin casts Navalny’s political allies as dangerous extremists out to destabilise the country on behalf of the West. It says Putin enjoys overwhelming support among ordinary Russians, pointing to opinion polls which put his approval rating above 80%.

Navalny described Putin’s Russia as a brittle criminal state run by thieves, sycophants and spies who care only about money. He had long forecast Russia could face seismic political turmoil, including revolution.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, his wife Yulia, opposition politician Lyubov Sobol and other demonstrators march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow on February 29, 2020

People hold placards during a vigil for Alexiei Navalny in front of the Russian Consulate General on February 16, 2024 in Munich, Germany

In one of his last major essays, Navalny in 2023 admonished the Russian elite for its venality, expressing hatred for those who squandered a historic opportunity to reform the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Navalnaya has accused Putin of ordering the killing of her husband, a claim the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed.

U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Putin did not order Navalny killed, according to the AP and the Wall Street Journal.

In August, Navalnaya dismissed information from investigators that Navalny had died from ‘a combination of diseases’.

She told the BBC that the Anti-Corruption Foundation she now leads in her husband’s place has evidence which she will reveal when they have ‘the whole picture’.