London:
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, will return to Russia and run for political office once Vladimir Putin is no longer leader, she told the BBC in an interview aired Monday.
Navalnaya, whose husband died in an Arctic prison in unclear circumstances in February following years as Putin’s top political opponent, also vowed to keep up her husband’s work.
But she said she would not be returning to Russia to do so.
“I want to live in Russia. I was born in Moscow, our children were born in Moscow… of course, it’s not possible while Putin is in power, but I hope one day all this regime will fall and I will come back,” Navalnaya said.
“If I will come back to Russia I will participate in the elections as a candidate,” she added.
“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin and I’m trying to do and I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible.”
Navalnaya, 48, called the international community’s response to her husband’s death “a joke” and urged them to be “a little less afraid” of Putin.
Russia added Navalnaya, who has been based for several years in Germany, to its list of “terrorists” and “extremists” in July.
Her late husband’s posthumous memoir “Patriot” will be released on Tuesday, chronicling his 2020 nerve agent poisoning and life in a brutal Russian prison camp.
The key opponent of the Russian president died in February in a penal colony, where he had been held in harsh conditions, sparking worldwide condemnation.
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