Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, says she will one day run for president of Russia when Vladimir Putin is no longer in power.
In an interview with the BBC on Monday, local time, Ms Navalnaya, who now lives abroad in an undisclosed location, said she would return to Russia and contend for Kremlin chief when the time was right: “I will participate in the elections … as a candidate.”
“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. And I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible,” she told the BBC’s Katie Razzall.
Alexei Navalny being detained in Moscow on July 10, 2013. (Reuters: Grigory Dukor)
Ms Navalnaya also expressed her desire to see Mr Putin behind bars, saying her return was impossible while he remained leader.
“I would love [if] Putin will be in prison. I want him to be in prison, in Russian prison,” she said.
“And it’s not just about [the fact that] I want him to be in [the] same conditions like Alexei [Navalny] was, but it’s very important for me [he go to jail].”
In July, a Russian court ordered Ms Navalnaya’s arrest in absentia.
The charges against her were not specified, but appeared to relate to authorities designation of Mr Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation as an extremist organisation.
Putin unchallenged
Mr Putin has been Russia’s paramount leader since the last day of 1999, and is currently 72 years of age.
Since the sudden death of Mr Navalny in a Russian prison in the Arctic Circle in February, no single leader has emerged to unite the country’s disparate opposition, and there has been significant infighting between different Russian dissident groups abroad.
Mr Navalny died aged 47, depriving the Russian opposition of its most charismatic and popular leader. He had been serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on charges including “terrorism and extremism” he said were rigged in order to silence his criticism of Mr Putin.
The Kremlin casts Mr Navalny’s political allies as dangerous extremists out to destabilise the country on behalf of the West.
It says Mr Putin enjoys overwhelming support among ordinary Russians, pointing to opinion polls which put his approval rating above 80 per cent.
Mr Navalny described Mr 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.
In one of his last major essays in 2023, Mr Navalny 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.
Ms Navalnaya has accused Mr Putin of ordering the killing of her husband, a claim the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed.
US intelligence agencies have determined Mr Putin did not order Mr Navalny killed, according to the AP and the Wall Street Journal.
In August, Ms Navalnaya dismissed information from investigators her husband died from “a combination of diseases”.
She told the BBC the Anti-Corruption Foundation she now leads in her husband’s place has evidence which she will reveal when they have “the whole picture”.
Reuters/ABC
