Yulia Navalnaya realized her husband, the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, would return to Russia as soon as he recovered from being poisoned in an attack he blamed on the Kremlin.
They knew the risks, but still there was no debate about whether returning to Russia was the right move, Navalnaya said. For them, it was a matter of when, not if, they would bring the fight against Vladimir Putin back to Russia.
“Of course, I would love to live all my life with my husband. But at that moment, I knew that there is just one decision which he could take,” she said. “And it was his decision. And I knew how important it was for him. And I knew that he wouldn’t be happy to live in exile.”
They were met by police, who arrested Navalny when he and Yulia returned to Russia in 2021. Navalny’s fight against Putin, his arrest and his time in prison before his February 2024 death are detailed in his posthumous memoir, “Patriot.”
How Navalny wrote “Patriot” while in prison
Navalny began working on his memoir, which comes out Oct. 22, while he was in Germany recovering from a 2020 assassination attempt that almost cost him his life. But much of it was written while in custody in Russia.
The opposition leader managed to maintain a presence on social media while in prison, keeping up his attacks on Putin. 60 Minutes has been asked not to say how Navalny managed to post online.
Navalnaya said the conditions her husband faced in Russia worsened each month because he kept speaking out against Putin. In “Patriot,” Navalny wrote that those conditions included “sleep deprivation,” “punitive solitary confinement” and almost no medical care. When none of that broke him, he was sent repeatedly to a “concrete black hole” called the “punishment cell.” He’d remain there for up to 15 days at a time.
Despite the conditions, he wrote that he was happy because he adored his work, knew he had support and because “I met a woman with whom I share not only love… but [who] is just as opposed as I am to what is going on.”
He managed to get his writing out while under constant surveillance.
“Alexei was very smart, very inventive,” Navalnaya said.
Navalny wrote that he devised an operation to bamboozle the guards, using identical notebooks and passing them on to someone during his court appearances.
“It was very difficult,” Navalnaya said. “That’s why we have diaries from the first year, much less from the second year, and not from the third year because it wasn’t possible.”
Taking up her late husband’s work
Navalny was tried and convicted several times on various pretexts in the years leading up to his death. His original three-and-a-half year sentence was extended to 19 years. After each verdict, he was moved to a different prison with harsher conditions. He was transferred to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle last December.
The 47-year-old dissident’s final court appearance came just one day before his Feb. 16 death. Navalnaya posted a video message shortly after her husband’s death.
“Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” she said. “By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart, and half of my soul.”
Navalnaya, once her husband’s silent partner, is now the leader of his opposition movement. She says the fight against Putin isn’t over. Her husband, she said, still has backing among the Russian people.
“He still has millions of supporters,” Navalnaya said of her late husband. “You can see it by how many people go still every day to his grave, how many flowers on his grave.”
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She’s also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Putin’s place is in a Russian prison, in a small cell like the one her husband died in.
“He needs to be in Russian prison to feel everything,” she said. “What not just my husband, but all the prisoners in Russia [feel].”
What Navalnaya risks
Navalny’s political network in Russia has been crushed. Many members of his old team now operate out of Vilnius, Lithuania. Three of his lawyers are on trial in Russia, where Putin won his fifth term in March.
Navalnaya and her two children have been forced to live in exile. She’s constantly on the road, lobbying Western leaders to stand up to Putin.
Over the summer, a Russian court issued an arrest warrant for Navalnaya, but she remains defiant of Putin and unafraid — even though she knows she could face retaliation.
“I don’t want to live my life and to spend my life every day thinking about if they kidnap me today or tomorrow, if they are going to poison me today or tomorrow,” she said.
