Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, attended the Munich Security Conference (MSC), the day it was announced that Alexei Navalny had died by the Yamalo-Nenets region prison service where he was serving his sentence. Munich, South Germany on February 16, 2024.
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Yulia Navalnaya “didn’t have a choice.”
That’s what a Ukrainian lawmaker said about the wife of the late Alexei Navalny, who vowed to continue her husband’s political work fighting for democracy in Russia after he died in a Siberian prison last month.
As the first reports of Navalny’s death began to appear, Navalny was in Munich at a security conference. At first, she wasn’t sure whether to believe the reports.
Then, she took to the main stage: “I thought: Should I stand here before you or should I go back to my children?” And then I thought: What would Alexei have done in my place? Standing here on this stage.”
Yulia Navalnaya (L) is praised by European Parliament President Roberta Metsula after addressing the European Parliament on February 28, 2024.
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Since then, Yulia Navalnaya has changed the mission of her husband.
“I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. Continue to fight for our country. And I invite you to stand before me,” he said in a video message, shared on X, a few days later.
A sense of injustice
Lisa Yasko, 33 years old and a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said she can relate. His colleague is in prison in Georgia for defying the authorities.
Ukrainian MP Lisa Yasko speaks in April 2022.
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Hailing from Kyiv, Yasko became a political activist after the so-called Maidan uprising in 2014, which saw Ukrainians take to the streets to demonstrate in favor of closer ties with the EU, not Russia.
“I think I should get into politics to make a change, I feel the injustice,” he told CNBC via Zoom last month.
At the time, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych had bypassed his country’s parliament and refused to sign a cooperation agreement with the European Union.
In 2019, Yasko met with the now President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and decided to become a legislator for his party.
A view of the barricades in the city center after demonstrations in 2014.
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At the beginning of her political career, Yasko was seen as a “young one”, but said that women in politics began to gain “more respect” after the invasion of Russia.
Yasko was among the Ukrainian delegation that traveled to the Munich Security Conference in February to ask for more help from Western allies.
Two years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country, Yasko said Ukraine is now facing “two or three times the pressure.”
‘Accidental Politician’
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is no stranger to fighting for democratic values. She became Belarus’s opposition leader after her husband was detained for challenging ruling President Alexander Lukashenko – a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Tsikhanouskaya has been in exile since 2020 after running against Lukashenko in the presidential vote. She represents her country at international meetings and is a supporter of tougher sanctions on Lukashenko, who has called for the arrest of hundreds of activists who have challenged his nearly three decades in power.
Exiled Belarusian political opposition leader Svetlana Tikhonovsky holds a folder with a photo of her husband, jailed opposition figure Sergei Tikhonovsky, in November 2023.
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“I call myself an accidental politician,” he told CNBC via Zoom.
“It was 2020 when my husband decided to make a decision [the] Presidency, but he was immediately arrested and prevented from doing so [running] … Out of love, first of all, I decided to run,” he said.
In May 2023, a statement by US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken said that Belarus was “unjustly” holding 1,500 political prisoners.
When asked what keeps him going, Tsikhanouskaya said: “It is [a] Great pain, pain that turns into energy.”
“Because when you wake up every day with thoughts about your husband … but all the cruelty, the pain that a person is feeling right now, you know, you’re very angry about this lawlessness. ” he added.