Did Yulia Navalnaya visit her husband, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on February 14, 2024, and did she bring him gifts and medicine shortly before his death? No, that's not true: No evidence suggests Yulia Navalnaya visited her husband before his death. Western and Russian media confirm she hadn't seen him in person for at least two years. Living outside Russia, she didn't attend his funeral to avoid the risk of being arrested.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @_paramax_ on February 22, 2024.
The Russian captions, translated into English by Lead Stories staff, read:
THINK!
February 14, Navalny's wife visited him and brought him gifts and medicine! On the same day, she flies to Moscow in the evening. The following morning, on February 15, she boards a flight from Moscow to Istanbul and waits there for 4 hours for a transfer to Munich. She arrives in Munich on the evening of February 15. The next morning, February 16, she attends the opening of the 2024 Munich Security Conference and, during the first interview, immediately blames the Kremlin.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Mar 4 08:05:20 2024 UTC)
The TikTok video proceeds with footage capturing Yulia Navalnaya just before her speech on February 16, 2024, at the Munich Security Conference (archived here), along with an excerpt from her video address (archived here) where she is heard saying, as translated:
I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny.
Later on in the video, a caption reads the following, as translated:
Chichvarkin knew about Navalny's death two days in advance.
The video continues with an unidentified man saying, as translated:
Two days before Navalny's death, Mr. Evgeny Chichvarkin said an interesting phrase.
In the final segment of the video, an interview features Russian businessman Evgeny Chichvarkin, along with an unidentified female voice asking a question, at the end, as translated:
The regime will continue to degrade, and the opposition will do nothing about it. I don't think the opposition will unite anytime soon, only unless irreversibly tragic news comes from prison or in prison.
Are you referring to Navalny?
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a vocal critic of the Putin administration, passed away in a Russian prison on February 16, 2024 (archived here). He was arrested upon returning to Russia in 2021. According to a Guardian's article dated February 19, 2024 (archived here), the last time Yulia Navalnaya (archived here) and Alexei Navalny met in person was in 2022. This information is corroborated by other media sources, as seen here, here, and here (archived here, here, and here).
Russian media reports also indicate that the Russian opposition leader and his wife had not recently met, underscoring that Navalny's wife hadn't visited him for years. Several of these reports, seen here and here (archived here and here), emphasize this lack of recent contact, using it in a discrediting campaign against her (archived here), portraying her partnership negatively. As part of this campaign, Russian propaganda seeks to insinuate more than a friendly connection between her and Evgeny Chichvarkin (archived here), as depicted in the final segment of the TikTok video.
According to a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article dated February 20, 2024 (archived here), the Kremlin-controlled RT TV news channel cited "law enforcement sources" in 2023 stating that upon her return to Russia, Navalnaya would face arrest like her husband. Another report from The Guardian dated March 2, 2024 (archived here), stated that the wife of the Russian opposition leader, residing abroad, refrained from attending her husband's funeral due to the risk of arrest.
Official social media profiles of Alexei Navalny do not contain any information confirming a recent meeting shortly before his death. On the contrary, on February 14, 2024, Valentine's Day, a coordinated post appeared on Navalny's official profiles on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and VKontakte (archived here, here, and here). In this post, Navalny addressed his wife, declaring his love for her and expressing that he felt her presence by his side despite their physical separation. The posts read, as translated:
Darling, with you, it's all like in a song: between us, there are cities, airport runway lights, blue snowstorms, and thousands of kilometers. But I feel like you're right beside me every second, and I love you more and more.
No evidence, press releases, or media reports from reliable news sites support the claim that such a visit took place shortly before the death of Navalny. A search (archived here) for a combination of the words "Yulia Navalnaya, visited and Alexei Navalny," including the year "2024," conducted by Lead Stories on March 4, 2024, using Google News' index of thousands of credible news sites, did not return any results.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to Yulia Navalnaya can be found here.
