Yulia Navalnaya has urged western countries to adopt innovative means to defeat Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the widow of Russian political dissident Alexei Navalny urged MEPs to harness the spirit of her late husband by finding novel approaches in their attempts to defeat and disrupt the Russian war effort.
Her speech comes just days after French president Emmanual Macron seemed to break from the consensus of NATO allies by admitting that discussions on the potential use of troops in the fight against Russia had been considered, something roundly contradicted by the United States, UK and Germany.
Addressing the Parliament, Mrs Navalnaya implored leaders to use financial investigations rather than diplomatic to fight the regime that she labelled a “criminal gang.”
Mrs Navalnaya said: “If you really want to defeat Putin, you have to become an innovator, you have to stop being boring.
“You can't hurt Putin with another resolution or another set of sanctions that is no different from the previous ones.”
Her address comes just days before her husband is expected to be laid to rest in Moscow on Friday.
Mr Navalny died in mysterious circumstances in a prison gulag near the arctic circle on February 16.
He had been held since January 2021 on charges widely believed to have been politically motivated following his public criticism of Putin and the Kremlin regime.
His mother’s attempts to claim his body were repeatedly frustrated, as she claimed on X that the Russian authorities were holding his body hostage in a bid to force the family to agree to a secret burial.
The body was given to the family eight days after his death, with significant details of the funeral yet to be released.
Mrs Navalnaya admitted that she was unsure if the funeral will go ahead peacefully and was unable to rule out the prospect of mourners being arrested for attending.
Yesterday, her husband’s lawyer Vasily Dubkov was briefly arrested for a “public order offence” before being released.
Mr Dubkov had accompanied Mr Navalny’s mother to the prison camp to retrieve the body and had helped to negotiate the release to the family.
Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons
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