Navalny's widow considers “disparate” to call humanist Putin

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of the Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, today considered “a nonsense” to call “humanist” to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, as did the special envoy of the White House Steve Witkoff last week.

“Putin killed my husband. So, for me, calling him ‘humanitarian’ is nonsense. And it's not just about wars. This year, at the Munich Security Conference, five European countries said that there is much evidence that my husband was poisoned in prison,” he said in London.

Navalnaya thus reacted to Witkoff's statements last week, when he praised Putin during a meeting held in St. Petersburg.

“He talks about my president, President Trump, as a humanist – you are also a humanitarian, and I welcome that. I congratulate him,” Witkoff said about the release of an American citizen.

Moscow released 74-year-old retired professor Stephen Hubbard, arrested in 2022 and sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.

Alexei Navalny died a Russian prison in the Arctic at the age of 47 in 2024.

The widow recalled as “first of all, they took him hostage”, being arrested on arrival in Russia in 2021, being “presiding for years, as if in prison.”.

In 2023, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for allegedly founding and funding a terrorist organization.

“They were so afraid of him that they poisoned him,” said Navalnaya, currently president of the Human Rights Foundation, who today presented in London the collaboration with the Action for Democracy organization to develop the “Authoritarian Collaboration Index”.

In a joint statement in February, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands reported that Navalny died of a lethal toxin present in poisonous South American frogs.

Russia claims that Navalny died of natural causes in prison in February 2024.