ON 16 FEBRUARY last year, Yulia Navalnaya was in Munich, at a security conference with world leaders, when she read on X that her husband had been killed. She didn’t believe it at first, then saw it reported widely, by various sources. Her husband, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who she married aged 24 and shared two children with, had died in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle, where he had been imprisoned by the Kremlin for trying to overthrow the Russian regime.
At the conference, Navalnaya stood in shock, phone in hand, trying to process the news. Kamala Harris, then the vice-president of the United States, hugged Navalnaya and offered her words of comfort. She was warm and supportive, everyone was, Navalnaya explains, but, ‘I’m not sure…
