'Vladimir Putin killed my husband,' says Alexei Navalny's widow

MOSCOW: Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said on Monday that she would press on with her husband's fight for a free Russia and called on supporters to battle President Vladimir Putin with greater fury than ever.

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

In a nine-minute video message laced with rage, Navalnaya, 47, said Putin had killed her husband and in doing so had robbed her of a husband and her two children of a father.


But she said the only answer to such a crime was to continue her late husband's fight for a free and prosperous Russia. Russians, she said, wanted to live differently, even if there appeared little hope.

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

"I urge you to stand next to me," she said. "I ask you to share the rage with me. Rage, anger, hatred towards those who dared to kill our future."