By unashamed believer in Love, guest columnist Tess Lawrence
The romance between the Navalnys, Alexey and Yulia is destined for historical and cinematic heroic grandeur, now that Vladimir Putin’s nemesis has been put to death by murder most foul.
For sure, in due course, there will be a film, a popera, a musical, a docudrama series, and merch. I bags a tee shirt.
There should be scholarships, and awards in his honour and I daresay, hundreds of babies will be named for him.
Navalny murder, Novichokolat or poison in boxer shorts?
Whether his murder was precipitated by a variant of Novichokolat cookies or no, or poison placed in his boxer shorts, may not be known for some time.
I am transfixed with what I saw in this particular photo of this most extraordinary couple.
Perhaps I saw too much. Perhaps I saw not enough. Regardless it is a photo worth a thousand and one words.
I see Love. Joy. Two Hearts beating as one, visions of dismembered children momentarily leave me
Most of all I see deep love and joy; two hearts beating as one as their eyes lock in sensual embrace.
For a moment, it cleansed my driven journalist’s mind and lacerated soul of visions that often haunt and taunt me; visions of dead, dying and dismembered children of our beleaguered world at the behest of the bloodied hands of adults doing the bidding killing in the sullied names of their fallacious gods.
Navalny’s cause held threat of unhappy ending for family
Given the cruel interplay between kismet, Alexey and Yulia, the sacrifices and trauma endured by the Navalny family whose father willingly placed himself on the frontline of a cause that always held threat of an unhappy personal ending, given Putin’s cowardly penchant for murdering his political rivals and critics.
How can a man so cowardly, so paranoid, the archetypal bully so fearful of certain other men, afraid even of his own invisible shadow, whose politics manifest in sadism, sadomasochism and sadomachismo in equal measure, become the brutal and tyrannical ‘dicktator’ of the largest land mass country in the world?
Putin has turned Russia into a Pariah nation
Despite his power. Despite his obscene wealth, secret opulent palaces (exposed by Navalny), global holdings held by proxies and assets, all stolen from his own people, despite his iron Rule by Fear manifesto and Hitleresque encroaches into Crimea and Ukraine with forces dragooned from prisons and civvie street as well as mandated conscripts, Putin has managed to turn Russia into a pariah nation.
Surrounding himself with acolytes, sycophants and sickos and those supplicants fearful for their own lives and families should Putin catch even a whisper of dissent from them, Putin’s realm is already a catalogue of war mongering and joyless lost years.
His self-love and self-gratification speaks loud and his absence from so many political fora, sanctions notwithstanding reflects his personal insecurities and inability to confront his peers.
Putin’s joyless realm has fashioned Russia into a gulag
At times, it seems as if Putin has fashioned Russia into a gulag of sorts. Somehow, I feel the ghosts of Stalin and Beria lurking in Putin’s dystopian universe.
They never left the Lubyanka building.
Alexey Navalny unnerved Putin
Alexey Navalny’s growing presence and following clearly unnerved Putin.
Putin knows how to handle a man in uniform, but he cannot fathom a man, an Opposition Leader, who dresses in cool clothes, who’s a cool dude with a steadfast family and supporters, with a jocular irrepressible prankster sense of humour, even whilst in his IK-3 prison cell in the notorious ‘Polar Wolf,’ in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets region, high above the Arctic Circle.
Navalny could take the Kremlin not by bullet but the ballot
Navalny was a leader who could persuade followers with his vision for a Russia without Putin, without taking the Kremlin by the bullet but rather, by the ballot box.
Remember how the vain glorious Putin thought by taking his clothes off, baring his torso on horseback or whatever, he would impress the world.
For a while it was as if Putin tried to emulate the spectacular and handsome Russian borne film star Yul Brynner.
For a while, Putin ludicrously tried to emulate Yul Brynner
He of the flaring nostrils and impressive physique who bared his chest in The King and I was to tragically die young of lung cancer in 1985, but not before he recorded a profoundly moving anti-smoking commercial to be played after the five-pack a day actor’s death.
Such things I am thinking as I contemplate the photo of Alexey and Yulia. It is so far removed from the bleakness of the malevolent Putin. He would have seen this photo of the lovers.
Russian official says Putin obsessed with Alexey Navalny, Yulia and family
A former Russian official who still has contacts on the periphery of Putin’s inner circle tells me that Putin is obsessed with all things Navalny, including Yulia and the children Dasha and Zakhar and remains constantly informed on everything and anything to do with all things Navalny.
Tess… Putin was “in love” with Alexey
“Tess, it was like he was in love with Alexey.” Putin is shown file upon file about Navalny, with endless photos and clandestine images taken by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) and others.
I’m rather in love with Alexey and Yulia myself, I told my friend. To me they represent Russia far more than Putin ever will.
“ … Alexey Navalny is Vladimir Putin’s Taylor Swift… spends more time on Navalny than… Ukraine War…”
“You can say that Alexey Navalny is Vladimir Putin’s Taylor Swift… he spends more time on Navalny than he does the Ukraine War. It is a joke.”
I’m told that Putin took a prurient interest in the conjugal visits Yulia was occasionally allowed when Alexey was in a prison in Pokrov.
Pokrov locals joke Putin perved on cctv Alexey and Yulia’s conjugal visits
Locals joked about how the loving couple were captured on non-secret secret cameras, for every second (pro forma), and that copies were sent to the Kremlin for Tsar Putin’s pleasure.
Putin taken with Yulia’s beauty and grace
He is said to be taken with Yulia’s beauty, elegance and grace and jealous of the obvious love and affection that she and Alexey unashamedly display in public, regardless of whom is watching.
Somehow, with their arms locked around each other, they seem utterly absorbed in a world of their own making; in a time suspended from the shackles of measurement in minutes or seconds. There is just the now; just the moment. The rest of us do not exist.
Star crossed lovers Yulia and Alexey and their date with destiny – In all the Vodka joints in all the towns in all the world…
Am a believer in romantic love. I think it wondrous that in all the vodka joints in all the towns in all the world, Yulia and Alexey’s fell into each other’s arms. The star-crossed lovers had a date with destiny, and they have surely kept it, at great cost to themselves but one hopes, for the greater good, small consolation that may be.
Yulia, Alexey’s Muse. Theirs a marriage of equals
Theirs appears to be a great and abiding love. By all accounts, Yulia was Alexey’s Muse and they were equal partners in a marriage that was also a political tour de force that remains determined to free Russia from the megalomanic, despotic and malignant regime of the psychopathic dicktator President Putin.
Comparatively little has been written about the critical role Yulia played in saving her husband’s life after that first poisoning in 2020. It was Yulia who fought tooth and nail, including writing directly to Putin, to evacuate a then dying Alexey from Russia to Germany.
Yulia’s decisive role in keeping her husband alive after first murder attempt
In her compelling and revelatory 2021 article for Vanity Fair, Russian born American journalist Julia Ioffe dug deep behind the lurid scene of the Navalny assassination attempt.
Ioffe’s forceful prose consigned Yulia Navalnaya’s rightful place in history, not only in relation to Russia but to the world. Navalnaya was no mere adjunct not Alexey Navalny, but she was his equal in every way. Unquestionably, her courageous and resolute intervention saved her husband’s life.
From Ioffe’s article, some powerful excerpts:
… At the hospital in Omsk, Navalnaya would encounter a wall of doctors who seemed more scared of their civilian superiors than they were of losing their patient. They were reinforced – or kept in line – by a small battalion of plainclothes federal security officers, all intent on keeping her from seeing her husband. To enter his room, she would need to present a marriage certificate, they said, and secure verbal consent from Navalny, who was still unconscious and on life support. She would stare them down, out-argue them, and bend their will to hers, all while a gathering swarm of journalists trained their cameras and microphones and smartphones on her. She would finally break through to see him, his body sprouting tubes and cords like vines, writhing in near-constant seizures. (She wouldn’t know until days later that this was the result of a military-grade nerve agent in the Novichok family.) She would have to fight with doctors and hospital administrators to see the results of her husband’s lab work, to give impromptu press conferences on the hospital steps, to sneak around the city to find the German doctors who had arrived with a private medevac plane and whom the authorities had barred her from seeing. She would have to demand, over and over, that the Omsk hospital release her husband and allow him to be loaded onto the plane and taken to Berlin, the only way, everyone knew, of possibly saving his life…
… For two days, Russia and the world waited nervously to see if Navalny, the only halfway plausible alternative to Vladimir Putin, lived or died. Instead, they saw Navalnaya. 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. What people saw astounded them. “Russia is still a sexist country,” says economist Sergei Guriev, a friend and onetime adviser to Navalny. “People think that a woman is not an independent person, especially if she doesn’t work. Therefore, they didn’t understand that Yulia is an independent person. And then they understood. They saw Yulia fight the machine and win. I think for many people it was eye-opening.”
…The next day, with the plane from Germany already on the ground in Omsk, Navalnaya issued a public letter to Putin. “I am officially addressing you,” she wrote, “with a demand for permission to transport Alexey Anatolievich Navalny to the Federal Republic of Germany.” Within hours, she was boarding the plane alongside her husband, invisible on a gurney that was part cocoon, part coffin. Her formulation – a demand rather than a plea – was not lost on the Russian opposition. Even at her most desperate and vulnerable, she approached Putin, the man trying to kill her husband, not as a fearful supplicant but as a defiant equal.
In the following months, as Navalnaya and her husband documented his resurrection and recovery on social media, they became the measure of decency and nobility for millions of Russians…
Alexey a Lazarus of sorts – thanks to his love, Yulia
If Yulia had not been the tour de force she is, Alexey Navalny would not have ultimately been brought back from the brink of death. Still, he was a Lazarus of sorts because of her- and because she was able to get into Russia and somehow take control.
Yulia learns of Alexey’s death
Yulia was in Germany attending the Munich Security Conference 2024 when, along with the rest of us, she first learned of her husband’s murder.
She came out on centre stage, just after US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke and delivered an electrifying speech, addressing Vladimir Putin as much as the world and Navalny’s supporters.
A Message from Yulia Navalnaya:
The prison authorities issued this statement in Russian confirming Navalny’s death:
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УФСИН России по Ямало-Ненецкому автономному округу сообщает
16.02.2024
16.02.2024 года в исправительной колонии №3 осужденный Навальный А.А. после прогулки почувствовал себя плохо, практически сразу потеряв сознание.
(English translation) THE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY SERVICE OF RUSSIA IN THE YAMALO-NENETS AUTONOMOUS OKRUG REPORTS
16.02.2024
On 16.02.2024, in correctional colony No. 3, convict A.A. Navalny felt ill after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness.
The medical staff of the institution immediately arrived, and an ambulance team was called.
All the necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not give positive results. Ambulance doctors pronounced the convict dead.
The cause of death is being established.
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Yulia vows to sip from the poisoned chalice of opposition leadership
Since her Munich speech, Navalnaya has made it clear she will not give up Navalny’s fight; that she will also sip from what some feel is a poisoned chalice.
She and Alexey knew such a day could come and they surely would have prepared for it.
When Alexey Navalny went back to Russia after Putin’s first attempt to assassinate him failed, he too was taking the fight – not flight – to Putin. Navalny was pissing in Putin’s face.
Navalny’s return to his homeland was a public humiliation for Putin and confirmed Alexey Navalny had no respect for, or fear of Putin. Even if the world didn’t always know where Navalny was or what was happening to him, the international spotlight was firmly trained on Navalny and his predicament.
Navalny had what Putin didn’t – respect
Navalny had what Putin wanted; something that had never been freely given. Respect. Respect on the international stage too.
It was not only a courageous decision, but it was also a show of solidarity with like-minded fellow Russians within – and without Russia and its great diaspora that includes Australia.
Navalny became a growing symbol of a glimpse of Russia without Putin. He had an indefatigable sense of humour, sarcasm and satire that was always present in his journalism, documentaries, podcasts and interviews.
I sent the ‘love photo’ to a few dear ones and wrote of how powerful a photo it was. How sexually charged it was, with the power of love, of secrets between lovers and how it made the viewer (me) feel almost a voyeur; even though we are all invited to view them through the collective peephole of social media.
The photo: luscious carnality in Alexeys’ eyes as he looks at his beloved Yulia
There is a luscious carnality in Alexey’s eyes that goes beyond lust to an even lustier place. Swoon. His lips are slightly parted, and his eyes burn with love. Even from here I can feel his breath upon my face.
Yulia’s lips are not parted. But her profile exudes both knowing and shared intimacy between the two, and she displays an elegant and steely queenly resolve that has already manifested into a leading role of Keeper of the Flame.
I ponder upon what Sister Wendy would have made of this picture, given her daring and courageous proclivity to describe fleshly attributes in artworks, as she saw fit.
Alexey Navalny more powerful in death than life
Alexey Navalny may yet prove to be more powerful in death than he was in life insofar as Putin and his henchmen are concerned.
The photo first appeared, I understand in Navalny’s Instagram account, posted on St Valentine’s Day.
Navalnys make it clear they fight for all political prisoners, not just Alexey
Yulia has made it clear that she holds Vladimir Putin responsible for Alexey’s awful death. The couple has made it clear their cause and their concern is not only for themselves but for all political prisoners, Russian or otherwise.
If you think such talk of Love is a bit twee or Mills and Hoonish, then go for it. You may be right.
Navalnys campaign pivots on jou and optimism, hope and faith, greater good
The thing is, that closer scrutiny of the Nalvalny Opposition campaign
reveals it pivots on joy and optimism, hope and faith in the greater good. And Love.
On his Valentine’s Day post featuring the ‘Love Photo’ Alexey wrote to Yulia… I feel you near me every second, and I love you more and more…
Two days later, Alexey Navalny was dead.
Their social media accounts are full of embraces and kisses.
Navalny’s Chief of Staff, Leonid Volkov is quoted as saying “Putin is fear. Navalny is Love. That’s why we will win” Volkov announced on Twitter/X.
Their campaign rhetoric is far from the phallic war mongering machismo of Putin and his political siblings around the world; the so-called iron men who rule by instilling fear; who do not realise you cannot enforce respect. It has to be earned and freely given.
Putin must now be aware he killed the wrong person. That is, if he wanted to annihilate the Opposition. Instead, in Alexey’s wake, he has inadvertently paved the way for someone else who may yet prove to be an even more formidable foe than Navalny.
Yulia Navalnaya is already deemed a contender for Russia’s first female President. She certainly has the credentials, the capacity and street cred amongst younger Russian supporters and yes, there is dissent and disagreement within the Opposition and also about Navalny’s leadership that has yet to be overcome.
Nonetheless Yulia has vowed to carry on the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Even though her pledge is made in Russian, you are sure to understand every word.
Today, Yulia and the Anti-Corruption Foundation announced the lanch of a large scale election campaign under the slogan ‘ The Noon Against Putin ‘ with the aim of showing many Russians are really against the dictatorship.
From the Press Release:
On March 17, election day, the “Russia without Putin” campaign will not end. The name of the campaign makes it clear that it will only end when the main goal has been achieved.
Alexei Navalny has become a symbol of the fight against Putin. We will do everything we can not only to avenge Putin’s power for this despicable murder, but also to unite all the free people of Russia under Alexei’s name. To liberate our country, end the war and bring all those responsible to justice.
Putin beware. Yulia’s coming for you.
Putin better watch out.
She is coming for him.
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