Even so, “it was a big decision” for Navalnaya to continue her husband’s work, he said.In their marriage, she was “the rock” Navalny relied upon. They “had an understanding” that Navalnaya would not be politically active and would stay out of the limelight, Ashurkov said.Navalny returned to Russia from Germany, analysts suggested, because he knew it would be difficult to be perceived as a legitimate opposition leader abroad.His widow is unlikely to travel to Russia because of security concerns and now faces a similar conundrum in figuring out how to lead her husband’s organization from exile.On Friday, shortly after news of Navalny’s death broke, she met a woman in a similar situation — Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.Tsikhanouskaya picked up the political baton from her husband, Belarusian opposition leader Syarhei Tsikhanouski, in 2020 after he was jailed in the run up to Belarus’ presidential election.She ran a successful campaign but fled Belarus after longtime President Alexander Lukashenko declared himself the winner in an election widely regarded in the West as fraudulent.“We understood each other without any words,” Tsikhanouskaya said about Navalnaya. Tsikhanouskaya said she has no idea about her husband’s condition, or whether he is dead or alive.“It’s so difficult when you feel such huge pain, but you have to … give interviews to encourage the democratic world to make decisive actions,” Tsikhanouskaya said in an Associated Press interview.Operating from abroad for almost four years already, Tsikhanouskaya said living in political exile is challenging. It’s “very important not to lose connection with the people inside the country,” she said.That will be tough, particularly inside Russia, where most Russians still get their news from Kremlin-controlled state media.Although he was Russia’s most famous opposition leader — charismatic and cracking jokes even while serving a 19-year prison sentence — Navalny almost never appeared on state television, which carried only the briefest mention of his death.The Kremlin is likely to adopt the same approach to Navalnaya, effectively cutting her off from the Russian people via a state-backed information blockade.Since Putin invaded Ukraine, the scope for dissent in Russia has narrowed even further. Russian authorities have tightened speech restrictions and jailed critics, often ordinary people, sometimes for decades. Hundreds of people who laid flowers in Navalny’s memory were detained, and persuading Russians to take a collective public stand against Putin will be almost impossible.
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