As many Russians were still reeling on Monday from the death of Alexei Navalny, they received news that could be of some comfort.
Three days after the Russian authorities declared the opposition politician had died in a prison north of the Arctic Circle, his wife Yulia Navalnaya on Monday said she would take up her husband’s mission to topple Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart, and half of my soul. But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up,” she announced in a YouTube video. “I will continue Alexei Navalny’s cause.”
It was a passionate declaration — and an unmistakably political one.
Navalnaya appears to be following in the footsteps of Belarus’ Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya who, after her husband’s jailing, took on his role as an opposition politician despite a lack of previous experience, becoming a lightning rod for protest against the country’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko.