Yulia Navalnaya has described President Putin as a “bloody monster” who acts like a mafia godfather.
In an address to the European parliament on Wednesday, the widow of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny also urged western lawmakers not to treat Putin as a rival politician but as a gangster.
She was speaking after it was announced that her husband’s funeral will take place on Friday in Moscow. Several locations had previously declined to host the service.
Navalny, 47, died on February 16 while imprisoned in a Soviet-era Arctic penal camp. His cause of death is still unknown, though his wife has claimed he was poisoned, and supporters and western leaders have said they hold Putin responsible for his death. The Kremlin has denied such claims.
“You are not dealing with a politician but a bloody monster. Putin is the leader of an organised criminal gang,” Navalnaya said in Strasbourg. “This includes poisoners and assassins, but they are just puppets.”
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She urged representatives of European countries to “stop being boring” in dealing with Putin, advising that “you have to be an innovator” to challenge him and make the Kremlin “panic”.
“The most important thing is the people close to Putin,” she added. “His friends, associates and keepers of mafia money. You and all of us must fight the criminal gang … apply the methods of fighting organised crime, not political competition.”
Navalnaya warned against the idea that the West would at some point have to come to an agreement with Putin. Her husband’s death, she said, “showed everyone that Putin is capable of anything, and that you cannot negotiate with him”.
“Alexei was tortured for three years,” she added. “He was starved in a tiny stone cell, cut off from the outside world and denied visits, phone calls and then even letters.
“And then they killed him. Even after that, they abused his body and abused his mother.”
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She was greeted with a standing ovation in the parliament.
Navalny’s memorial service is set to be held in a church in Maryino, southeast Moscow, and the nearby Borisovskoye cemetery on Friday.
His mother, Lyudmila, released a video message last week appealing directly to Putin when authorities refused to release his body. It was finally handed over nine days after his death, after she accused authorities of “blackmailing” her into a secret burial.
“Come early,” said Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, on Wednesday. She had said this week that she and her allies had been struggling to find a location for Navalny’s memorial service.
“Some of them say the place is fully booked. Some refuse when we mention the surname Navalny,” Yarmysh wrote on Twitter/X.
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Navalnaya, 47, said: “I am not sure yet whether it will be peaceful, or whether police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband.”
