Navalny’s Widow Calls on Russians to Derail Putin’s ‘Fake’ Election
Alexei Navalny’s widow has called on Russians to take action on election day to derail Vladimir Putin’s “fake” victory.
In a video appeal released Wednesday, Yulia Navalnaya said she wants to finish what her husband started by carrying out the last protest event he’d arranged, called “Noon Against Putin.”
“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us. We are real, living people, and we are against Putin. You need to come to the voting station on the same day and at the same time—March 17 at noon,” she said.
“What to do next? The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. 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.”
Acknowledging that the Kremlin would “most likely” react by “starting to scare everyone,” she said that “the more they scare us, the more we must remember: If they don’t want it this way, then it’s a problem for them. And if this is a problem for them, then this is how we must act.”
The event would also honor her late husband, she said, who died suddenly last month in a remote Arctic penal colony, where he was locked up after an assassination attempt had failed to deter him from organizing anti-Kremlin rallies and speaking out against Putin. Earlier this week, independent Russian media reported that the security services were already cracking down on those who attended the funeral of the late Kremlin foe or laid flowers at his memorial.
Using surveillance footage, law enforcement reportedly identified several people and later showed up at their homes to arrest them.
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