Yulia Navalnya said in her address to the European Parliament on February 28 that "her husband's murder showed the public that Vladimir Putin cannot be negotiated with."
Alexei Navalny, she said, was "tortured and hungry", she said before the European Parliament, 12 days after the death of her husband, Putin's main opponent, in a Siberian prison.
"And then they killed him. And after that they abused his body and abused his mother," she said in her address to European parliamentarians, who greeted her with applause.
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She emphasized that the "murder" of her husband showed the public that "Putin is capable of anything and that you cannot negotiate with him". Navalny added that people were shocked by her husband's death and worried that "Putin cannot be defeated."
Navalny, who was 47 at the time of his death, was a political activist in Russia and a longtime, prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Alexei Navalny will be buried in Moscow on March 1, after his team struggled to find a funeral home to bury him.
Navalny told European parliamentarians that her team had spent a week preparing for Navalny's funeral, adding: "The funeral will be the day after tomorrow and I'm not sure yet if it will be peaceful or if the police will arrest those who came to say goodbye to Alexei."
She then addressed the European Parliament directly, saying: "However, I stand here now because your constituents have an important question. They ask you, and then you ask me. The question is: 'How can I help your fight?'"
Navalny promised to continue her husband's work in the fight for a "free Russia".
Alexei Navalny's wife mentioned before the European Parliament the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, describing it as a "brutal and insidious war".
"But two years have passed, there is a lot of exhaustion, a lot of blood, a lot of disappointment, and Putin has not gone anywhere," she said.
She added that people are now used to war and people are starting to say, "Well, we'll have to come to an agreement with Putin."
"And then Putin killed my husband, Alexei Navalny," she continued.
Navalnya said that her husband was tortured for three years on Putin's orders - starved in a small cell, cut off from the world.
Alexey inspired people despite the restrictions that Putin placed on him throughout his life, she continued. When they wouldn't play his TV, he turned to the YouTube channel. When he was denied the vote, he devised a strategy to take seats away from Putin's party.
"Even in Putin's gulag, Alexei managed to convey ideas for projects that would have caused panic in the Kremlin," she says.
Navalny emphasized that Putin cannot be hurt by sanctions or resolutions, not even on the basis of morality and rules.
"You cannot hurt Putin with another resolution or another set of sanctions that are no different from the previous ones. You cannot defeat him by thinking that he is a man of principles who has morals and rules," she stated.
Navalny told the European Parliament that they must fight against the "criminal gang" and said that financial investigations instead of diplomatic methods will be crucial.
She says that "tens of millions of Russians" are against Putin and must not be persecuted. She also stressed that Putin must be held accountable for what he has done to Russia, Ukraine and her husband.
"Putin must answer for what he did to my country. Putin must answer for what he did to a neighboring, peaceful country. And Putin must answer for everything he did to Alexei," she says.
At the end of paying tribute to Navalny, she said: "My husband will never see what the beautiful Russia of the future will look like, but we have to see it. And I will do my best to make his dream come true, evil will fall and this beautiful future will come. "
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