REUTERS Moscow

Moscow

Updated Monday, February 19, 2024-13:56

  • Russia Navalny's wife: "Putin and his supporters must not be allowed to go unpunished for what they have done to our country, my family and my husband"

The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said today she would continue her husband's fight for a free Russia and called on her supporters to fight President Vladimir Putin with more fury than ever.

Navalny's death deprives Russia's disparate opposition of its most charismatic and courageous leader, as Putin prepares for elections that will keep him in power until at least 2030.

In an angry nine-minute video message, Yulia, 47, said Putin had killed her husband and, in doing so, deprived her of a husband and her two children of a father.

But she stated that the only response to such a crime was to continue her late husband's fight for a free and prosperous Russia. The Russians, she said, wanted to live differently, even though there seemed little hope.

"I want to live in a free Russia, I want to build a free Russia," Navalnaya said in the video message titled "I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny."

"I ask you to stand by me

," he added. "I ask you to share the rage with me. Rage, anger, hatred towards those who dared to kill our future."

Yulia accused Russian authorities of hiding Navalny's body and waiting for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to disappear from his body.

"Vladimir Putin killed my husband

," she said. "By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me: half of my heart and half of my soul."

"But I still have the other half, and that tells me that I have no right to give up.

I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny, I will continue fighting for our country

. "

The Kremlin has denied involvement in his death and says Western claims that Putin was responsible for the death are unacceptable. Putin has warned that there will be a strong response if foreign powers try to interfere in the Russian elections.

Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died suddenly on Friday after a walk through the Polar Wolf penal colony in the Arctic, where he was serving a three-decade sentence, according to the prison service.

The Kremlin said on Monday that the investigation into his death was ongoing.