Yulia Navalnaya has stated that, in the event of her return to her home country, she will run in presidential elections. Navalnaya made the announcement in an interview with BBC after journalist Katie Razzall asked whether the widow of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny sees herself as a potential presidential candidate:
“My goal is to bring about and make possible change in the country. If I return to Russia, I will participate in the election as a presidential candidate.”
At the same time, Navalnaya noted that she would not return to Moscow so long as Vladimir Putin remains in power.
In February, after the death of Alexei, Yulia released an address, promising she would continue her husband's work:
“Vladimir Putin and his regime will be held accountable for the death of Alexei Navalny. Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin. We will continue to support Russian civil society and independent media.”
In July 2024, Navalnaya was chosen as the head of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an NGO that promotes and defends human rights around the world. Her candidacy was supported by the organization's previous chairman, Garry Kasparov, who had held the post since 2012.
In July 2021, Vanity Fair ran a major article recounting Navalnyaya’s recollections of the events that had transpired since Alexei’s poisoning in August 2020, when Russian FSB officers broke into his hotel room in Omsk to smear the weapons-grade chemical nerve agent Novichok on the inseam of his underwear. As Vanity Fair wrote:
“This pretty blond woman in a black leather jacket who had always appeared silently at her husband’s side was suddenly alone on the world stage, doing battle with the entire repressive machinery of the Russian state to pull her husband from the jaws of death. … In a country that hasn’t had a first lady since Putin’s divorce in 2013, here was a political wife who could more than hold her own in an almost exclusively male arena.”