Yulia Navalnaya demands justice in powerful speech after husband's death

Yulia Navalny, now the widow of Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny, demanded after her husband's death on Friday that the Russian autocrat and his government “be held personally responsible for all the atrocities they have committed”.

Russian prison authorities announced earlier Friday that Alexei Navalny, who was serving a 19-year sentence in an Arctic penal colony, died after a sudden collapse. Given the cloud of suspicious deaths surrounding Putin's vocal critics — and the fact that Navalny had survived two previous assassination attempts — Russia's account of his death was met with immediate suspicion.

Yulia Navalny, who was attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany, took the stage in a surprise appearance shortly after news of her husband's death broke.

“I thought, 'Should I stand here in front of you or should I go back to my children?' Then I thought, “What would Alexei do in my place?” he told the conference.

Navalnaya added that she could not trust the claims of the Russian authorities because “they lie all the time.”

“I want Putin and his entire circle to know that they will be held accountable for what they did to our country, my family and my husband,” she said. “And that day will come very soon.”

Navalny called on “the entire international community, all the people in the world, to unite and fight against this evil.”

“We will have to fight this horrible regime in Russia today,” he said. “This regime and Vladimir Putin should be held personally responsible for all the atrocities they have committed in our country in recent years.”

The crowd in Munich gave her a standing ovation.

Alexei Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, he wrote on Facebook that she doesn't “want to hear condolences,” adding that she saw her son “in prison on February 12, at a meeting. He was alive, healthy and happy.”