‘I don’t know how to live without you, but I will try to make you proud of me’: Alexi Navalny’s wife Yulia releases touching video tribute to her husband after being forced to stay away from his funeral

Alexei Navalny’s wife Yulia has shared her final message to her husband with the world.

The grieving widow could not attend Navalny’s funeral for fear of being arrested.

She has promised to continue his work and she took to X to share a video accompanied by her moving words.

For a woman at the center of one of the greatest democratic struggles of modern times, who now carries the weight of Navalny’s opposition progress on her shoulders, her message does not contain even a single reference to politics or war.

Just love.

Yulia wrote: ‘For love, for always supporting me, for making me laugh even from prison, for always thinking about me’

Alexei Navalny is survived by his wife Yulia and their two children, aged 22 and 17

Her message, addressed to Lyosha, a nickname for Alexei, reads: “Lyosha, thank you for 26 years of absolute happiness.

Yulia could not attend the funeral because she would have been a prime target for arrest.

After the death of her husband, she took over the position of new opposition leader.

A life in the political spotlight would be a big change for Yulia, who once told Russia’s Harper’s Bazaar that her “main job” was to look after the couple’s children and home.

On Wednesday, she addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, shortly after Navalny’s aides announced they had arranged his funeral after more than a week of trying to retrieve his body and find a suitable location.

She said: ‘I thought that in the twelve days since Alexey’s murder I would have time to prepare for this speech. But first we spent a week retrieving Alexey’s body and organizing his funeral. Then I chose the cemetery and the coffin.

“I don’t know yet if it will be peaceful and if the police will arrest those who come to say goodbye to my husband.”

In her speech to the European Parliament, she talked about what her husband has been through and what her intentions are with Russia.

She said: ‘He was starved in a small stone cell, cut off from the outside world and given no visitors, phone calls or even letters, and then they killed him.

She wrote: “I don’t know how to live without you, but I’ll try to make you up there happy for me and proud of me

Yulia could not attend the funeral because she would have been a prime target for arrest

Alexei Navalny had been married to Yulia since 2000 and they had two children together

She wrote: “I have so many untold stories for you, and I have so many songs saved for you on my phone, stupid and funny, in general, to be honest, terrible songs, but they are about us, and I really wanted happy to make you listen to them’

“Even after that, they abused his body and his mother.

‘He was the opposite of everything boring.

“This is the answer to the question: if you really want to beat Putin, you have to become an innovator; you have to stop being boring.

Putin must answer for what he did to my country.

Putin must be held accountable for what he did to a neighboring peaceful country.

And Putin must answer for everything he did to Alexei.

‘My husband will never see what a beautiful Russia of the future will look like, but we have to see it.

‘And I will do my best to make his dream come true.

She said: ‘My husband will never see what a beautiful Russia of the future will look like – but we have to see it’

“Evil will fall and the bright future will come.”

Yulia told the European Parliament: ‘This is the answer to the question: if you really want to beat Putin, you have to become an innovator; you need to stop being boring.”

At Navalny’s funeral, thousands of supporters showed up despite clear advice to abstain, and anti-Putin chants could be heard in the crowd, in violation of Russian law.

Many shouted: ‘Putin is a murderer’.

As might be expected, there was a very heavy police presence.

The details of those present were not known, but the French, German and American ambassadors were in the crowd, as well as some of Russia’s last free independent politicians.

Navalny’s team had accused Putin of killing his top critic and hampered their efforts to give the dissident a dignified send-off.

It also warned that male mourners at the funeral could be rounded up and sent to the frontlines of Ukraine, where Putin is waging a brutal war that entered its third year last week.