MUNICH — Shock, grief and then fury rippled through the hallways and conference rooms of the Munich Security Conference on Friday as the news of Alexei Navalny’s death spread, announced by authorities in the Siberian prison where he’d been taken late last year.
It did not come as a surprise — Navalny had escaped previous attempts on his life, including by poisoning by a military nerve agent in 2020. That he had defied death so often perhaps made it all the more difficult to absorb the reality that President Vladimir Putin’s relentless challenger was most likely gone.
In the halls of the conference, Germany’s Ambassador to the United States Emily Haber, who previously served in Moscow and knew Navalny well, reacted with shock.
“Oh, no! We were working on getting him out,” she said.
The news came as Vice President Kamala Harris was beginning a scheduled speech, which she started off by addressing the news. “If true, it would be a further sign of Putin’s brutality,” she said.
“And that whatever they tell us, let us be clear: Russia is responsible,” Harris said before moving on to her prepared statement, which included a blast against Putin and a reaffirmation of U.S. support for Ukraine.
And then — suddenly and unexpectedly — Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, walked onto the stage. Tall, dignified and composed, she spoke in Russian to the hushed crowd.
“You all heard about the horrific news,” Navalnaya said. “I thought about it quite a while. I thought, ‘Should I stand here before you or should I go back to my children?’ Then I thought, ‘What would Alexei have done in my place?’ And I’m sure that he would have been standing here on this stage.”
Still, she cast doubt on whether news of her husband’s death was true.
“We cannot believe Putin and his government. They are lying constantly,” she said.
“But if it is the truth, I would like Putin and all his staff, everybody around him — his government, his friends — I want them to know that they will be punished for what they have done with our country, with my family and with my husband,” she said. “They will be brought to justice, and this day will come soon.”
Navalnaya then called on the international community to “come together, and we should fight against this evil. We should fight this horrific regime in Russia today.”
“This regime and Vladimir Putin should be personally held responsible for all the atrocities they have committed in our country in the last years,” she concluded.
She thanked attendees as they rose to their feet in applause.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador and friend of Navalny’s said that at dinner with Navalnaya the night before, she said there was no hint of him being ill. Among the conference attendees, there was little doubt that Navalny’s death was anything but an assassination.
Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who was leading a bipartisan congressional delegation, said he had not reviewed the intelligence but didn’t doubt that Putin not only had him murdered, but timed the death to send a message to the world leaders gathered in Munich on Friday.
