LONDON (Reuters) – The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday the scale of public support for him since his death was proof that his cause lived on, and called for a massive election day protest against President Vladimir Putin.
In a YouTube video, Yulia Navalnaya said she had drawn hope from the huge crowds that turned out last week for the funeral of her husband, who died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. Since his burial, supporters have submerged his grave in a sea of flowers.
“Looking at you, I am convinced that everything is not in vain, and this thought gives me strength,” she said.
“Now you all know that there are actually a lot of us, all those who love and support Alexei, who share his ideas and, as long as we have each other, it’s not over.”
Navalny, in one of his last public messages, had urged people to protest against Putin by voting en masse at noon local time in the March 17 presidential election, forming large crowds and overwhelming polling stations.
Navalnaya took up her husband’s call.
“This is a very simple and safe action, it cannot be prohibited, and it will help millions of people see like-minded people and realise that we are not alone,” she said. “We are surrounded by people who are also against war, against corruption and against lawlessness.”
The stakes are high for both the opposition and the Kremlin.
If the “Noon Against Putin” action fizzles, it will be a blow to Navalnaya’s hopes of taking on her husband’s mantle, even though she is based outside Russia, and showing that opposition to the Kremlin is still alive.
But if people heed the call, it could turn into a big rolling protest across Russia’s 11 time zones and present a dilemma for the authorities, as police would have no obvious legal grounds to disperse people standing in line to vote.
‘WE ARE STRONG’
Putin, in power since the last day of 1999 as president or prime minister, is assured of winning six more years in power. Two would-be challengers who spoke out against the Ukraine war were disqualified from the election on technical grounds and none of the three remaining candidates is critical of Putin. The Kremlin says he will win because he commands genuine support across the country, with opinion poll ratings around 80%.
Two years into the war, Putin’s leading opponents are dead, in jail, or outside the country. Navalnaya called the elections “a complete fiction and a fake”.
“What to do next? The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin,” she said. “You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station, and then turn around and go home.”
Having survived a poisoning attempt in 2020, Navalny, who was 47 when he died, was serving sentences of more than 30 years on fraud, extremism and other charges that he said were trumped up to silence him.
The Kremlin has portrayed Navalny and his supporters as lawbreakers and tools of the West, acting to destabilise Russia. It has denied Navalnaya’s accusations that Putin had him killed.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Ros Russell)
