Alexei Navalny’s wife Yulia must support her husband’s voice, Alexander Litvinenko’s widow said on Saturday.
“Yulia Navalnaya did the very right thing,” Marina Litvinenko told Reuters – her husband Alexei was well known in Russia and abroad. It’s important for her to support his voice, but now she herself has become his voice.”
Marina Litvinenko’s late husband Alexander, a former KGB officer and defector who became an outspoken Kremlin critic, died in 2006 three weeks after drinking green tea laced with polonium 210 in a London hotel. In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for the killing.
Litvinenko said she was shocked by the news of Navalny’s death. She said she had “very little hope” that Navalny would be able to leave prison and start his political career if Putin’s power collapsed.
“The international community must be stronger, not limit itself to good words about how sorry they are and sympathize with Navalny’s family, but take real action,” Litvinenko said.
Many Western leaders have expressed outrage at Navalny’s death. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Britain would definitely take action, although he did not say what exactly. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the reaction “unacceptable.”
In Russia, at least 340 people have been detained at small protests in 30 cities since Navalny’s death, according to a Russian human rights group.
“When we see even a tiny protest, even a tiny reaction to the death of Alexei Navalny, I think it’s very serious. We still have people who have not been brainwashed,” Litvinenko said.