On February 16, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison. According to official information, the cause of death was thrombus, although the leaders of various countries and Navalny’s supporters are suspicious of this issue. The fact that Navalny’s body was handed over to his family only on February 24 raises further doubts.
On February 19, Yulia Navalnaya published a video message and declared that she would continue her husband’s path, calling on society to unite in this struggle. After this statement, the discrediting of Navalnaya began actively in Russian propaganda channels. Navalnaya was criticized for the quality of mourning, insufficiently sad and cheerful face, clothes, and bare shoulders, and was even accused of neglecting Orthodox rules.
According to Belarusian political scientist Andrey Lazutkin, she even attended the Oscar ceremony after her husband’s death; however, it should be noted that the event has not yet taken place. Yulia Navalnaya was also accused of cheating on her husband, including with businessman Evgeny Chichvarkin. Video and photo manipulations generated by artificial intelligence were also used against Navalnaya.
In addition, propagandistic social media accounts (1, 2, 3) linked Navalnaya’s involvement in politics to the West and wrote that she was appointed by the US and Great Britain to create unrest in Russia.
Messages Against Yulia Navalnaya
Kremlin propaganda refers to Navalnaya as a “happy widow” (1,2,3,4).
Propaganda outlet Царьград writes that Navalny’s wife is presented by the press as a loving wife, although after her husband’s death, she did not even shed a tear or fall into despair at the Munich Security Conference.
“Almost everyone who saw how Yulia Navalnaya spoke and behaved at that conference noticed an inappropriate smile on her face. You don’t need to be a physiognomist to understand what Navalnaya’s smile means,” reads the article by Царьград.
“No matter how the independent media tries to whitewash the behavior of the widow, the main thing is clear: Yulia does not want to say goodbye to her husband, because his death, it seems, was not a difficult challenge for her” – the publication quotes one of the authors of the channel Вспомним Советский Союз of the Russian social network dzen.ru.
Propaganda media claimed that Navalnaya was lucky to learn about her husband’s death at the Munich Security Conference – she became the center of attention of Europe’s leading politicians and journalists, opening a perspective for her.
Kremlin propaganda journalist Margarita Simonyan also commented on Yulia Navalnaya’s appearance and presence at the Munich conference. She criticized Navalnaya’s speech at the conference in the program “Вечер с Владимиром Соловьевым“.
Margarita Simonyan, RT Editor-in-Chief: “Two hours after her husband’s death, the wife wearing make-up and smiling appears at the press conference…”
In the same program, Simonyan and another Kremlin propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, noted that the West is using the issue of Navalny’s death to cover up the effect of the interview between Putin and Tucker Carlson.
Navalnaya’s make-up and mourning were discussed in other Russian programs as well. On February 21, in the Лабиринт Карнаухова” program of Solovyev LIVE, Kremlin propagandist Alexander Saslovsky commented on the video of Yulia Navalnaya, which she recorded after the death of her husband.
Alexander Saslovsky: “Mimics, mannerisms, clothing, bare shoulders. It is a rule in the Christian tradition, forgive me, but an Orthodox woman, whose husband dies, covers her head with a headscarf. At least, she does not go out with bare shoulders.”
Disinformation and Visual Manipulations
Since February 17, Russian Telegram channels have been disseminating a fabricated quote from Paul Ekman, a psychologist, as if he analyzed Yulia Navalnaya’s speech and noted that the woman could not hide her joy when she gave a speech after the death of her husband.
“This is not the reaction of a woman who recently learned about the death of her beloved husband. We are facing a strong woman who, after the death of her husband, finally attracted all the attention of this world. This is what she wanted the whole world to talk about only about her” – we read in the quote disseminated on Telegram channels.
The fabricated quote that was circulated under the name of Paul Ekman, which in some cases was also distributed in a video version, was verified by the Russian independent fact-checking platform – provereno.media.
In the video itself, Ekman does not speak, we only see the alternation of frames and the accompanying quote; The American Psychological Association (APA) logo is displayed in the upper right corner of the video, and at the end of the video, viewers are encouraged to visit the APA’s online journal, Monitor on Psychology, to view Ekman’s full interview. Neither the mentioned nor the official page of Paul Ekman features an interview with similar content.
Yulia Navalnaya – “The Cheating Wife”
After the death of Alexei Navalny, photo manipulations of Navalnaya’s “infidelity” were also disseminated en masse. In one photo, she is pictured with Russian businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin. The photo was actually taken in 2021, although propaganda channels spread it as recent. The photo was posted on Chichvarkin’s Instagram account on August 17, 2021, with the following description: The future first lady of Russia. #my friend. freedom to Navalny.
Chichvarkin is the former owner of Euroset, Russia’s largest mobile phone retail chain, and is now in opposition to Putin. He was a supporter of Navalny and provided him with some financial support.
The second photo, on which Yulia Navalnaya was again paired with Chichvarkin, is photoshopped and has been circulating since 2021. The authentic version was shot in 2013 and depicts Alexei Navalny and Yulia Navalnaya.
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Altered Photo |
Authentic Photo |
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The published photos were verified by the fact-checking service of AFP.
Yulia Navalnaya was accused of infidelity even before the death of Alexei Navalny. At the beginning of February, a video of a woman pretending to be the family’s former helper, Anna Gonchar, was published (1, 2, 3 ). She claimed that Yulia Navalnaya had affairs with various men in parallel with her marriage to her husband, including businessman Chichvarkin and Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev.
As it turned out, Anna Gonchar, who was presented as a former helper of the family, does not exist, and the video was created using deepfake technology.
According to a Belarussian political scientist, after the death of her husband, Navalnaya attended the Oscar ceremony, which has not yet been held.
On February 20, Belarusian political scientist Andrey Lazutkin said on СТВ that the wife of the deceased politician does not mourn her husband and attends social events. In the frame, a photo of Yulia Navalnaya from the Oscars is shown, which, according to Lazutkin, was taken after Navalny’s death. It should be noted that the Oscar awarding ceremony has not been held yet and is scheduled for March 10. The widely circulated footage is from last year’s awards, where Yulia Navalnaya was with her children. In 2023, Canadian director Daniel Roer’s film “Navalny” was awarded the Oscar in the category of the best documentary film. The widespread claim was verified by the Belarusian Investigative Center.
AI-generated video appeal against Yulia Navalnaya under the name of Navalny’s mother
A video generated by artificial intelligence against Yulia Navalnaya was also distributed. A few days after Navalny’s death, on February 22-23, the Russian propaganda media (1, 2) published an audio recording in which Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of Navalny, accused Yulia Navalnaya of transferring her husband\s property to her own name, causing a rift between her children, and her husband’s death in Russia. She accuses Navalnaya of “appropriating” her husband’s voice and trading with his death. The shared video is believed to be generated by artificial intelligence. The recording contains a mechanical, unnatural sound.
