This was not the speech he expected to give, at least not on this day. Yulia Navalnaya had come to a gathering of world leaders in Munich to press them to remember her imprisoned husband and her troubled country.
And then just as the conference opened on Friday morning came word from Russian state media that her husband, the crusading, defiant dissident Alexei A. Navalny, had died in one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s prisons .
By her own admission, her first thought was to fly away, to join her grown children in private mourning for a man who had already survived a horrific poisoning and years behind bars. But before he did, he decided he needed to talk. Why would he want to?
Ms Navalny stunned presidents, prime ministers, diplomats and generals at the Munich Security Conference when she entered the room on Friday afternoon, took the stage and roundly condemned Mr Putin, vowing to bring him and its cycle. in justice. Her dramatic appearance electrified a conference already consumed by the threat of a revanchist Russia.
“I don’t know if I should believe the news or not, the awful news that we’re only getting from government sources in Russia,” she told the packed audience, who were hanging on her every word. “We cannot trust Putin and Putin’s government. They always lie.”
“But if this is true,” he continued, speaking in Russian, “I want Putin and everyone around him, Putin’s friends, his government, to know that they will be held accountable for what they have done in our country, in my family. and to my husband. And that day will come very soon.”
“And I want to call on the world community,” he continued, “everyone in this room and people around the world to come together to defeat this evil, to defeat this horrible regime that is now in Russia.”
Ms. Navalnaya spoke clearly and calmly, with no notes but remarkable composure, her face etched with obvious pain. Standing at the lectern, she clasped her hands in front of her and stared straight ahead as if to focus on her message. She was dressed in the business pants she’d brought for what she thought would be a day or two of lobbying, her hair pulled back, her makeup perfect. She seemed determined not to show weakness.
He spoke for just two minutes, but captivated the audience, which included Vice President Kamala Harris sitting in the front row and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in the balcony. The crowd rose to give her a standing ovation and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, reached out as Ms Navalnaya left the stage to kiss her as two senators looked on.
“On the worst day of her life, she was so powerful and a reminder that Russians who believe in freedom will continue to fight for as long as it takes to hold Putin accountable for his barbaric crimes,” said Michael A. McFaul, a former ambassador. in Russia, he said of Ms. Navalny after her speech.
In the annals of international meetings, it would be hard to recall a more riveting moment, when carefully choreographed and scripted speeches laden with diplomatic jargon fall by the wayside as matters of life and death are played out in such a personal way. The leaders gathered in Munich had already wondered what to do about Russia, but the news added new urgency to the talks.
Ms. Harris had come to give a speech about the dangers of soft-peddling on Russia at a time when House Republicans are blocking aid to Ukraine and former President Donald J. Trump boasts he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies who do not spend enough on their own militaries.
Minutes before her speech, she and her staff heard the news about Mr. Navalny, tried to find out what they could, and quickly updated her text to reflect the outrage.
“If confirmed, this would be another sign of Putin’s brutality,” he told the conference, words that were later echoed by President Biden in Washington. “Whatever story they tell, let’s be clear: Russia is responsible.”
He went on to express the message he hoped to convey, that the United States remains committed to its allies and to American leadership in the world. Without naming him, he accused Mr Trump of seeking to “isolate ourselves from the world”, “embrace dictators and adopt their repressive tactics” and “abandon commitments to our allies”.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “This worldview is dangerous, destabilizing and, indeed, short-sighted. That view would weaken America and undermine global stability and undermine global prosperity.”
Afterwards, Ms Harris and Mr Blinken met separately with Ms Navalnaya to express their condolences and commitment.
Ms Navalnaya had come to Munich with Leonid Volkov, her husband’s longtime chief of staff, to keep world leaders focused on her husband’s case and Mr Putin’s government’s crackdown on dissent. She met Thursday night with conference participants, saw them at dinner, and described how conditions had worsened for her husband since he was transferred to a different prison in the Arctic.
“He had almost no contact with other people,” Mr McFall said he was told. “His outdoor walking area was actually another cell next to it without a roof. They severely restricted what he could read and channeled Putin’s speeches on a radio channel that only had one channel. It sounded like horrible torture.”
Over the years, many Russians hoped that Ms Navalnya could step in to become an alternative leading figure in the opposition. While she was outspoken in her defense of her husband and critical of the many forms of oppression he faced, however, she never directly joined the opposition—and rarely took the podium as she did in Munich.
During Mr Navalny’s time in Germany, where he was being treated after his poisoning in 2020, she remained private, only posting occasional pictures of the two of them together during his treatment and recovery, but never speaking publicly.
She became known to tens of millions around the world last year, however, when she appeared at the Academy Awards ceremony, where the documentary “Navalny” won an Oscar. In a subsequent interview with Der Spiegel, the German news agency, she expressed concern for her husband’s health in prison and lamented that she may never see him again.
“We all understand that it is Putin personally who is keeping Alexei in prison,” he said at the time, “and as long as he remains in power, it is difficult to imagine that Alexei will be released.”
Mr Navalny had continued to post on social media from prison, passing messages to his visiting lawyers. His most recent Instagram post was on Wednesday – Valentine’s Day – and was a message to Yulia: We may be separated by “blue blizzards and thousands of kilometers”, he wrote, “but I feel you are near me every second and I carry on to love you even more.”
Anton Trojanowski and Melissa Eddy contributed to the report.
