It is perhaps now she who will be at the center of the game, with the consequences that go with it. Since the announcement of the death of Alexeï Navalny, his widow Youlia Navalnaïa has been the target of fake news and online rumors aimed at discrediting her, even though she announced that she was taking up her husband’s fight.
Imprisoned for three years and after a poisoning for which he held the Kremlin responsible, Alexeï Navalny had spent nearly 300 days in a disciplinary cell, in exhausting detention conditions. Until the shock announcement of his death by the Russian prison services this Friday, February 16.
Just a few hours after the announcement of his death, Internet users began to relay a photo of his widow posing, smiling, on a beach alongside another man. The comments state or imply in particular that the photo dated from recent days, thus accusing him of simulating his sadness in his various public appearances since. “On the day of Navalny’s death, Yulka (sic), his grieving widow, was relaxing on a beach!!”, a user on the social network X (formerly Twitter) intends to denounce. The photo, accompanied by similar messages, was also widely published in English, German or Serbo-Croatian on various social networks.
A photo of… 2021
Except that this photo of Yulia Navalnaïa is absolutely not recent. Research carried out by AFP made it possible to trace the Instagram account of Yevgueni Tchitchvarkine, a 49-year-old Russian billionaire. He published this photo in August 2021, where he is seen alongside Yulia Navalnaïa. “With the first lady of the beautiful Russia of the future @yulia_navalnaya Freedom @navalny!” he wrote, locating the image in Jurmala, Latvia.
Co-founder and ex-owner of the first Russian mobile phone distributor Euroset, Evgueni Tchitchvarkine fled to Great Britain in 2008. Accused of kidnapping and extortion, he was the subject of an international wanted notice and a request for arrest. extradition until 2011 when Russia ended the prosecution.
Converted into the wine trade, Evgueni Tchitchvarkine has at the same time become a fervent opponent of Vladimir Putin. Friend of Alexeï Navalny, he helped him finance his fight and part of the medical costs following his poisoning in 2020, the press highlighted.
Three years ago, the publication of his photo with Yulia Navalnaïa was widely commented on. In an interview given to independent radio The Echo of Moscow (closed by the Russian authorities in March 2022), the businessman explained, with a touch of irony, the context of the photo: “People are jealous: they too would like to walk by the sea with Yulia Navalnaya, a beautiful and strong woman, potentially a First Lady.” “Unfortunately, Alexei was imprisoned, but no one imprisoned her,” he said again.
Pro-Russian networks activated
Yulia Navalnaïa is the regular target of rumors aimed at discrediting her or her late husband. Internet users also accused the forty-year-old of being a “political escort”, using the photo where she appears with Yevgeny Tchitchvarkin and the testimony of a woman presenting herself as her former assistant.
The assertion was notably relayed by the site pravda-fr.com which belongs to a “structured and coordinated” network of 193 sites disseminating Russian propaganda in Europe and the United States, according to Viginum, the French fight organization against foreign digital interference.
Other accounts on the Internet relayed photos of invoices from the hotel reservation site Booking to support their allegations. But according to Eliot Higgings, founder of the digital investigative media Bellingcat, the document presented was falsified.
His Twitter account briefly suspended
While she has announced that she will take over from her husband’s fight against Vladimir Putin, Yulia Navalnaïa created her X account (ex-Twitter) this Monday, where she already takes up the same very free tone that we know from her. “I don’t care how the killer’s spokesperson comments on my words. Return Alexei’s body and let us bury him with dignity, don’t stop people from saying goodbye to him,” he said. she thus wrote this Tuesday, responding to the fact that the Kremlin reproaches her for crude remarks by accusing Vladimir Putin of the death of her husband.
With a first setback this Tuesday: its brief suspension by Elon Musk’s social network for “violations of the rules of use”, without additional explanations. Although her account was restored in less than an hour, this incident nevertheless caused her number of subscribers to quickly increase, reaching more than 200,000 this Tuesday evening. Continuing the legacy she built with her husband will obviously not only be on the social network X. But to continue to gain notoriety, it is already a step.