Is Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya now his political heir?

Good morning. In the days since the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian penal colony, an urgent question has emerged: can anyone take up his mantle – or is opposition to Vladimir Putin bound to dissolve? Yesterday, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, provided one answer in a video released on social media in which she accused the Russian authorities of murdering her husband and hiding his body. “I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work,” she said. “I call on you to stand with me.”

Navalnaya’s intervention was extraordinarily powerful, freighted with the grief and rage that she asked Russians to carry on her husband’s behalf. But with no obvious prospect of a meaningful challenge to Putin in March elections or in the years ahead, the task for her – and for the rest of Russia’s fractured opposition – is formidable.

Today’s newsletter, with Dr Maxim Alyukov, a research associate at the King’s Russia Institute in London, is about where the Russian opposition can go from here – and what role Navalnaya might play. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

In depth: ‘No one person can replace him’

In the Russian presidential election due in March, Alexei Navalny wasn’t even on the ballot – and Vladimir Putin is certain to win. Nonetheless, said Maxim Alyukov: “Navalny’s killing, assuming that’s what it was, looks like a signal to demonstrate that resistance is futile, so don’t even try to do anything.” In the days since Navalny’s death was announced, at least 396 people have been detained in 39 cities at vigils in his memory, according to monitoring group OVD-Info.

That is the context for Yulia Navalnaya’s intervention – and the reason that some have seen her as a vessel for repressed opposition fury, and perhaps even a successor to her husband. But there are likely to be significant limits on her ability to act.

Who is Yulia Navalnaya?

Born in Moscow in 1976, Yulia Abrosimova met Alexei Navalny on holiday in Turkey in 1998. An economics graduate who became a banker, she gave up her career when the couple’s first child, Dasha, was born in 2001.

For most of the next two decades, she largely remained in the background – but, family friend Sergei Guriev told Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer for this excellent profile yesterday, “She was involved in all political decisions and has always supported Alexei and was part of his cause. Alexei has always relied on her advice.”

When Navalny collapsed on board a flight to Moscow in 2020 after being poisoned in Siberia and was hospitalised in Omsk, she became a forceful advocate for his release and evacuation to Germany. “If I fall apart, then everybody else will in turn fall apart,” she said later. “So, I pulled myself together.”

In the past, Navalnaya has always resisted the idea that she could be a political player in her own right. “She is not somebody who has his experience as a lawyer, an investigator, a politician,” Maxim Alyukov said. “But as his widow, her anger has great moral authority. The opposition will now need charismatic figures who can mobilise people, and if she continues on this path, she can be one of them.”

Could she be Navalny’s successor?

Yesterday’s message, coming after a remarkable appearance at the Munich security conference on the day the news of Navalny’s death broke, certainly seemed designed to situate Navalnaya as a major figure in the new configuration of opposition to Putin. Showing her dressed soberly and speaking directly into the camera from behind a desk, the optics and timing of the video implied Navalnaya as her husband’s inheritor – as did her echo of his catchphrase, “Hello, this is Navalny!” with her own name in place of his.

Her promise to continue his work made it explicit. Later on Monday, she met with EU foreign ministers in Brussels and urged them to “do more to target Putin’s circle” and his oligarch allies.

But Alyukov cautioned against any expectation that she could become the singular focus of opposition hopes in the way that her husband was. “Navalny was uniquely placed,” he said. “He was in Russian politics for 20 years – he pioneered new techniques of training candidates, tactical voting, building a team around him. For better or worse, he was the leader. However heavily she is now involved, there is no one person who can replace him.”

As well as her own remarkable composure and personal story, Navalnaya would benefit from the network of activists and significant online following built up by her husband, with some of its capacity maintained in Lithuania after Navalny’s 2021 imprisonment. “But within Russia, the infrastructure, the organisational aspect which co-ordinated protests, has been destroyed,” Alyukov said. “Those who could mobilise it have been forced to flee. So I wouldn’t call them a movement within Russia, even though a significant number of his supporters are still there.”

What does the Russian opposition look like otherwise?

Despite common consent that Navalny held pre-eminent status among dissidents, the wider Russian opposition is fractured. There are communists, liberal democrats, ultra-nationalists – the latter of whom Navalny once allied himself to – as well as regional groupings and those primarily motivated by opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.

Navalny and his movement did not seek to lead a broad opposition, though, viewing that project as a distraction. After a prominent exiled opposition activist, Maxim Katz, called in 2023 for an electoral alliance, Navalny said: “I will be direct: go to hell with your coalitions. This is imitation of activity. A fake.”

“There have been multiple views and agendas and conflicts in the last couple of years,” Alyukov said. “But I do think that the death of Navalny will contribute to some degree of unification – it has shocked everybody, and he’s a martyr now. If the leader is killed by Putin, it’s harder to fight over less significant things.” Yesterday, Katz responded to Navalnaya’s video on social media by writing: “Cool.”

At the same time, Alyukov said, there might be a view that it is better for future opposition to Putin to be less framed around a single figure – not least because many of those who might come to the fore after Navalny are either dead, in exile, or in prison. “In a highly repressive authoritarian context, it is more efficient to rely on decentralised structures – not to have a leader to get rid of. That has been visible in the cell-based anti-war tactics we have seen since 2022. You do need prominent people to mobilise support, but perhaps not just one person.”

Is there appetite for opposition in Russia anyway?

There is certainly a meaningful degree of anti-war sentiment in Russia, Alyukov said – and two recent polls have found large majorities hoping for peace in the near future. “Most would say that it has to end on Russian conditions,” he added as a caveat. “But there is a feeling it has to end somehow, and at least some demand for a person who could lead Russia out of this.”

Another signal of that sentiment came in the surprisingly vigorous candidacy of an anti-war candidate for president, Boris Nadezhdin, who collected more than 100,000 signatures to get on to the March ballot, only for the central election commission to rule that “irregularities” among the names meant he should be disqualified.

Putin’s quasi-democratic playbook has long featured the tolerance of minor opposition candidates – “to meet the demand for new faces, a little more diversity, within a repressive context”, Alyukov said. “They were confused about what to do with Nadezhdin, but that’s why they let him run in the first place.“

What will happen on election day?

Could Navalny’s death break those strictures and catalyse a more meaningful protest vote in March? It’s very unlikely. “Not because there is no demand, but because the protest is tightly controlled,” Alyukov said. Russia used to have an “against all” option on the ballot which was used to register protest votes, but the State Duma removed it in 2006. “Certainly, there will be tactical voting – vote for anyone but Putin to systematically lower his rating, and there are ideas of blocking polling stations.”

Navalny himself endorsed the idea of a mass vote at noon on election day to create symbolic crowds – with safety in numbers. But the arrests at memorials to Navalny over the weekend, and the relatively muted nature of the protests, suggest the limits of that approach, and it is impossible to imagine any outcome being allowed that will challenge Putin’s supremacy, at least in the near future.

Putin’s opponents will still see every reason to fight to be heard in the run-up to the election – and whatever role she ultimately plays, Navalnaya now seems certain to be an essential voice. “There will be a need to show that the opposition is alive, that it still exists, that it still criticises the government, that it has some kind of momentum,” Alyukov said. “It can’t affect the outcome, but it can introduce a degree of hope.”

What else we’ve been reading

• “Prevention, in exercise as in so many other things, is better than cure,” writes Joel Snape, who spoke to all kinds of coaches and athletes about the best techniques to deploy before exercise to avoid injuries. Nimo

• Some 2,500 acres of English countryside supposedly covered by the right to roam can only be reached if you trespass to get there. This, writes Simon Jenkins, makes a mockery of a law that ought to allow “the physical and mental liberation of the individual from the grip of the built environment”. Archie

• Despite the desperate attempts to reinvigorate the series, Love Island All Stars has been deemed a flop. Yomi Adegoke explains why Love Island has been unable to recapture the magic that shot it to fame in the first place. Nimo

• 25 years after her death, the plays of Sarah Kane are still as vivid and shocking as when they were written. Natasha Tripney spoke to five directors and writers about their experience of her work, and her preoccupations with violence, love, and “shaking people out of their despair”. Archie

• ICYMI: It started with a call from someone claiming to work at Amazon and ended, six hours later, with Charlotte Cowles handing over $50,000 in a box to scammers. My jaw dropped to the floor reading about the elaborate web of lies that led to The Cut’s financial advice columnist falling victim to con artists (£). Nimo

Sport

Football | Amadou Onana, pictured, equalised to secure Everton a 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace and lift the Merseyside club out of the Premier League relegation zone on Monday. The match was watched from the stands by the London side’s new manager, Oliver Glasner, after Roy Hodgson stood down and he was confirmed as his replacement.

Rugby | The Rugby Football Union has ditched a radical proposal to sell Twickenham and buy a 50% share of Wembley from the Football Association, the Guardian can reveal, instead focusing on £663m plans to overhaul its current stadium.

Cricket | After England’s crushing 434-run defeat by India in the third Test, Ali Martin writes that the obsession with Bazball masks the quality of England’s opponents. “Test matches require two teams,” he points out, “and Rohit Sharma’s side are a mighty fine one.”

The front pages

The Guardian splashes on Alexei Navalny: “‘Stand with me’: Yulia Navalnaya vows to continue husband’s fight”. The Times has “Widow says Putin used novichok to kill Navalny”. Her picture is on the front of the Telegraph too; the lead story is “US moves to block Israeli offensive”. The i goes with “Labour set to pledge triple lock on UK state pension” while the Financial Times says “Surge in pension fund buying drives revival in UK corporate bond market”. “Beautiful souls” – the Metro has the story of three young siblings believed to have been murdered in their homes in Bristol.

“‘Hundreds of high-risk flights’ land in UK unchecked” – that’s the Daily Mail reporting on findings delivered to Britain’s independent borders tsar, David Neal. “PM: I know it’s been tough, but our plan will boost Britain” – he’s not Rishi today in the Daily Express, so things must be quite serious for the Tories. “They are in our hearts and minds” – the Daily Mirror reports that William and Kate will meet aid workers about the situation in Gaza and talk to young people at a synagogue about worsened antisemitism.

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Anne Reeder spent over four decades working in the NHS as an occupational therapist and trust manager. When she reduced her hours in her early 60s, Reeder decided it was time to pursue more creative hobbies that she had put on the back burner in her adolescence. So she signed up for weekend classes to learn millinery, the art of hat making. She loved it – so much so that she ended up pursuing an intensive hat-making BTec qualification at Kensington and Chelsea College.

Her hobby quickly became a significant part of her life, as she launched her business in 2015. Now, at 77, Reeder, has a dedicated hat-making workshop in her home where she makes hundreds of hats. “I have to be careful not to make this another full-time job but it’s a wonderful community to be part of,” she says.

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

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