First Lady: Russia warms to the woman who ‘saved’ Alexei Navalny

As her husband’s challenge to Putin’s rule grows, so does the public profile of Yulia Navalnaya, reports Oliver Carroll in Moscow

Sunday 24 January 2021 09:00 GMT
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<p>Yulia surrounded by people as she leaves Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after her husband’s arrest earlier this month</p>

Yulia surrounded by people as she leaves Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after her husband’s arrest earlier this month

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It was an image that crystallised last weekend’s news. Yulia Navalnaya, the tall, blonde 44-year-old wife of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, embracing her husband at border control in a moment of cruelty and tenderness. The two had come home understanding the risks of returning to the lair of unsuccessful assassins – and the likelihood that a period of extended separation would follow.

To describe the chapters of the couple’s last five months as Shakespearean risks underselling the genre. To recap: first came the attack by a military-grade nerve agent. Then, the fortune of a quick thinking pilot and first responders. The agonising days of obfuscation by local bureaucrats. The drama of evacuation and the miracle of recovery. An investigation and a phone call that incriminated agents of the Kremlin.

Yet for many, it was exactly that; a Romeo and Juliet in Russian replay. Yulia Navalnaya’s impassioned defence of her man at every step along the way – from haranguing mendacious chief doctors to besieging Vladimir Putin to permit her husband’s evacuation – tugged at the emotions of many compatriots in ways they had not been before. Her ordinarily hard-shelled spouse was first among them. “Love heals and brings back to life,” Alexei wrote in a post-recovery ode. “Yulia, you saved me, and let them write that in the neuroscience textbooks.”

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