Latest news with #YuliaNavalnaya
Khaleej Times
3 days ago
- General
- Khaleej Times
Navalny widow launches TV channel to fight Russia 'censorship'
The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday praised the launch of a television channel that aims to bypass censorship in Russia and preserve the Kremlin critic's legacy. The channel, called Future of Russia, will be broadcast via a free-to-air satellite platform run by the press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, known by its French abbreviation RSF. Navalny's team hopes to get greater exposure and better reach with the help of the satellite broadcasts, which will feature content that Navalny's team is producing for their YouTube channels in exile. "I think it will be a long collaboration," Yulia Navalnaya told reporters in a short statement in Paris. She said Navalny's team was doing "our best" to keep reaching Russians on YouTube but the Kremlin has often tried to block the Western platform. "There is almost full censorship in Russia, and under a dictatorship it is very difficult to spread information," she said. Since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has outlawed all forms of public dissent and banned independent media and western social media. "We think it's really important that we are able to reach the Russian population as much as we can," said RSF head Thibaut Bruttin. The channel will launch on Wednesday, June 4, the day Navalny would have turned 49. The charismatic Navalny, Putin's main opponent, suddenly died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024. His family and supporters say he was killed on orders from Putin. Jim Phillipoff, project director of Svoboda Satellite at RSF, said the channel was important because it was bringing the content produced by Navalny's team to Russian-speaking broadcast audiences. He described the Navalny team as "pioneers" in countering years of Kremlin propaganda that combines "the glitz and glamour of western television" with Soviet-style messaging. "There's virtually no way to significantly penetrate the traditional television space in Russia except by satellite," Phillipoff added. Approximately 45 percent of Russians use satellite signals to watch television, he noted. With all top Kremlin critics either behind bars or in exile, Navalny's legacy has been fading in Russia.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It set me on a new path': the book that empowered me, by Yulia Navalnaya, Elif Shafak and more
Chosen by Katherine Rundell, author 'If they finally do whack me,' the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote in prison, 'this book will be my memorial.' He died at the age of 47, in a Russian penal colony in the Arctic Circle. Navalny's autobiography, Patriot, is a burning testament to what it looks like, in our fast-darkening world, to stand up to malignant corruption, to global bullies, to murderous domination. His writing is fantastically witty, egotistical, warm, swaggering, furious and relentlessly, insistently optimistic. It is his optimism that blasts through the book like a heat furnace. In prison, he tells his wife, Yulia, that he is likely to die there – 'even if everything starts falling apart, they will bump me off at the first sign the regime is collapsing. They will poison me.' He says it is better not to pretend. When she agrees, they embrace in joy. 'That was great! No tears.' This book reminds us that real resistance is powered by heat and light, by the stubborn belief that things might be Creatures by Katherine Rundell is published by Bloomsbury. Chosen by Chris Packham, nature writer I read this at 14, in the 70s, and it gave me nightmares. It was published in 1932, in the shadow of rising fascism, by a man who feared the rise of the machines. Now, 50 years after I first turned its pages, I have nightmares about the new world: a world living in the shadow of rising fascism and evasive truth, and fearful of AI. A world in the grip of a new dystopia: climate breakdown. But still Aldous Huxley's novel fuels bravery. I found myself in that book, only as a child I didn't recognise it. It is the book that made me the imperfect, flawed, brand new savage that I in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham is published by Ebury. Chosen by Yulia Navalnaya, campaigner and widow of Alexei Navalny I love books in which a personal story becomes inseparable from the story of a nation. In Word for Word, Lilianna Lungina recounts her life as a translator in the Soviet Union – and through it, the entire 20th century flows. She seemed to witness everything: the fear, the hope, the silence, the change. She met so many of the people who shaped Russian culture, and lived through every turning point. As I read, I kept learning about my own country – and, unexpectedly, about myself. It made me think deeply about what changed in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union – and what, heartbreakingly, stayed exactly the same. Chosen by Madeleine Thien, author This book, a reckoning with the carnage we are witnessing in Gaza, does a thousand vital things. It writes into wordlessness and grief; it confronts our complicity. Most of all, it refuses to give up what we hold dear – each other. This is a work whose impetus is love, so fragile a thing in this Book of Records by Madeleine Thien is published by Granta. Chosen by Chloe Dalton, author and foreign policy adviser I was 20 years old and studying English literature at university. There was no way this book was on the syllabus, so I must have stumbled across it. It's an account of the Rwandan genocide, which left me believing that war crimes can be prevented – we just often choose not to act. Fourteen years later, as adviser to the foreign secretary, I helped create a campaign to require governments to prevent mass rape and sexual violence from being used as weapons of war, as happened in Rwanda and continues in so many countries today. I can trace a line between reading that book and my Hare by Chloe Dalton is published by Canongate. Chosen by Elif Shafak, author I read this when I was young, and it inspired and empowered me in so many ways. It tells the story of a writer who keeps notebooks in different colours (black, red, yellow, blue), each reflecting her search for meaning across various aspects of life – personal, political, literary and psychological. Regarded as one of the key texts in the women's movement, its intellectual and emotional depth is captivating. The tension and harmony between different components of our lives was an important subject in the 1960s, but perhaps even more so in today's deeply fractured Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is published by Viking. Chosen by Kehinde Andrews, academic and author I was lucky enough to grow up in the legacy of British Black Power, so my house was filled with revolutionary material. But I only picked up Stokely Speaks because of its hilarious cover, with Stokely Carmichael with a mini-afro, brandishing a gun. At the time, I was struggling with my identity, attending a school that made it clear that to be Black was to be labelled as unruly and placed in a lower set. Stokely Speaks opened my eyes, and made me unafraid to challenge the system that had tried to break me. His book set me on the path I am on Can Give You Freedom by Kehinde Andrews is published by Allen Lane. Chosen by Philippe Sands, author and lawyer 'Twenty-four calculating machines at the gates of Hell.' Thus does Éric Vuillard characterise the industrialists who gathered in February 1933 to pay homage to Germany's new regime. The Order of the Day, which won France's Prix Goncourt in 2017, came to mind with images of tech titans standing to attention at the recent US inauguration, and accounts of the capitulation by American law firms to presidential threat that followed. History may not repeat itself exactly, but its insights – and those of the literary imagination – will offer clues if we want to see them. 38 Londres Street by Philippe Sands is published by W&N. Chosen by Laura Bates, author and feminist activist This powerful book upends centuries of economic theory by pointing out a fundamental flaw: that throughout history, most economists have failed to acknowledge the hidden, neglected, unpaid labour of women. If they fail to include the myriad ways in which women's work underpins our societies and our economies, doesn't that make their calculations useless? Katrine Marçal's willingness to ask bold questions, and to question ideas that have long been considered the bedrock of our economic and societal systems, is as refreshing as it is inspiring. Best of all, it empowers readers to start asking difficult questions of their New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates is published by Simon & Schuster. Chosen by Mike Berners-Lee, author and climate professor This life story of Indian-British activist Satish Kumar tells of his inner and outer journeys as a peace campaigner and environmentalist. He walked around the world without money, delivering packs of tea to world leaders with the message: 'If you are thinking of pressing the nuclear button, stop and have a cup of tea first.' He founded Resurgence & Ecologist magazine and Schumacher College for ecological studies in Devon, where he now lives. What is inspirational is his universal respect, his clarity of purpose, his colossal sense of adventure and his appreciation of the moment.A Climate of Truth by Mike Berners-Lee is published by Cambridge. Chosen by Tessa Hadley, author When I was trying and failing to write fiction as a young woman, a lot of the 20th-century male writers I most admired seemed to have finished with realism and the novel, as if its illusionism and its aim at lifelikeness were childishly naive, belonging to an unsophisticated earlier time. When I first read Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart, what joy and confirmation to find her sweating, in the 1930s, over every sentence, in her magnificent effort to capture the effects of the real, so solid and so fleeting – swans on frozen water in the park, a drunken fumbling in a seaside cinema, an airless London bourgeois home. This truth to life was what I always wanted as a reader; she gave me heart that it was worth striving for as a Party by Tessa Hadley is published by Jonathan Cape. Chosen by Ferdia Lennon, author I first picked up this book on the recommendation of George Orwell, which is pretty solid as book recommendations go. At the turn of the century, Jack London, best known for Call of the Wild and White Fang, travelled to London to explore its East End. What he encountered there disturbed him. In the largest city of the richest and most powerful nation in the world, he found poverty on an unimaginable scale. Through the personal stories of factory workers, vagabonds, workhouse inmates and discharged soldiers, the other side of the empire is achingly and compellingly revealed. As an Irish person, you take it as given that the British empire is not something to be celebrated, but until I'd read this book, I think I held quite a binary view of who the winners and losers were. What I hadn't quite grasped, until London brought it home to me in such a vivid and humane way, was the terrible cost of keeping the vast machine of an industrialised empire running, not just for those who were colonised, but also for the great masses at the heart of the empire who had supposedly Exploits by Ferdia Lennon is published by Fig Tree. Chosen by Kate Mosse, author Growing up in rural Sussex in the 1960s and 70s, living very much the same kind of narrow provincial life my parents and grandparents had lived before me, it was only through the BBC's Six O'Clock News that I got glimpses of worlds very different from my own. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's beautiful and uncompromising debut novel, changed all that. Not only did it make me look beyond my own experience to the realities of a more complicated, more varied world, but it showed the power of fiction. Set in 1941 in rural Ohio in the years following the Great Depression, the narrative is centred around Pecola and the hardships, abuses and misunderstandings she suffers. It's heart-breaking – a story of powerlessness, race, dislocation, survival and poverty, and what it means to be female. Essential reading and a novel that changes each time you return to Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is published by Mantle. Chosen by Len Pennie, poet I never used to think that I might fit into poetry, or that poetry might fit into me. It was to be studied, not enjoyed; analysed, but never truly understood. Poetry in the school context provided me with a list of concepts and techniques, allowing me to successfully pick at the bones of someone else's imagination, readily regurgitating what I'd gleaned in the exam hall. Anything I didn't really get was due to a lack of intellect, and anything I didn't really like, a lack of taste. I've read and reread this anthology many times since my parents gave it to me; every time I find something new to chew by Len Pennie is published by Canongate. Chosen by Joanne Harris, author I first met Dan Ariely on a tour of the US, and read his book out of curiosity. Nearly 20 years later, I still have my copy and revisit it regularly: it made me completely reassess the decision-making process I used to take for granted, and which I (wrongly, like most people) assumed was based on rational thinking. In fact, as Ariely says in the book, humans often make impulsive, irrational decisions, and once we understand how this works, we can sometimes avoid the pitfalls into which such thinking can lead us. It's an upbeat, accessible book, with a genuinely revolutionary message: and once I'd learned to identify some of the behaviours described, I started to see them by Joanne Harris is published by Orion. The Hay festival runs until 1 June. The site is free to enter with events ticketed individually.
The Independent
24-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Ukraine-Russia war latest: Eight injured as Moscow launches missile and drone attacks on Kyiv
Ukraine and US finalise reconstruction fund Ukraine and the US have finished setting up the US-Ukraine reconstruction fund, the core part of the agreement to share profits from new Ukrainian resource projects. Ukraine's first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said all procedures to set up the fund were completed on Friday. 'The Fund is now officially launched,' she said on X. Arpan Rai24 May 2025 07:15 Trump's involvement in Ukraine peace talks 'giving Putin more power', Yulia Navalnaya says Yulia Navalnaya has said Donald Trump's negotiations with Russia on Ukraine are making Vladimir Putin 'feel stronger'. The Russian activist and widow of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said Trump speaking to the Russian president 'like they're equal' is making him more powerful. She made the remarks while speaking at a sold-out event with Alastair Campbell at Wales' Hay Festival on Friday, which The Independent is once again partnering with. Trump's peace talks 'giving Putin more power', Yulia Navalnaya says Widow of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said Trump speaking to Putin 'like they're equal' is making him more powerful Arpan Rai24 May 2025 07:00 Trump heralds prisoner swap - before it takes place Earlier on Friday, US president Donald Trump heralded the Ukraine and Russia prisoner swap, before it had been completed. 'A major prisoners swap was just completed between Russia and Ukraine,' he wrote on Friday morning US time. 'It will go into effect shortly. Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???' Arpan Rai24 May 2025 06:45 'We waited, hoped': Families wait for returned Ukrainian prisoners Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted photographs of the 390 released Ukrainian captives, all with shaven heads, celebrating their release and wrapped in Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian media outlet Espreso TV published a video of the wife of a prisoner crying tears of joy, wrapped in a flag on Kyiv's Independence Square. She said she had been waiting for her husband's release since 2022, and had just received the call from Ukrainian authorities confirming the good news. "We waited, hoped and fought," said the woman, whose name was given as Victoria. Arpan Rai24 May 2025 06:30 Massive Russian attack of drones and missiles on Ukraine injure eight At least eight people were injured after Russia attacked Ukraine's capital Kyiv early today with drones and missiles, triggering fires, strewing debris in districts throughout the city, the city's mayor said. Reuters reported successive waves of drones flying over Kyiv and a series of explosions jolting the city. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two residents had required hospital treatment and that air defence units were in action. Pictures posted online showed smoke billowing from the top of one block of flats and flames leaping from part of another as emergency crews trained water on it. An orange-red glow lit up the city as plumes of smoke wafted across the horizon. Mr Klitschko said fragments from one drone struck the top floor of an apartment building in the Solomynskyi district on the west bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects the city. One apartment building was on fire in the area as was one non-residential building. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors. Arpan Rai24 May 2025 06:15 Photos show scale of Russian attack on Ukraine overnight Arpan Rai24 May 2025 06:10 In pictures: Ukrainian prisoners return home Russia released 390 Ukrainian prisoners on Friday including 120 civilians in part of the first stage of a prisoner of war exchange with Ukraine. Ukraine also returned 390 Russian prisoners, who will undergo medical treatment in Belarus before returning home. Arpan Rai24 May 2025 06:00 Putin says he wants boost to Russian arms exports Russia needs to strengthen its position in the global arms market by increasing exports of weapons, country's president Vladimir Putin said. In televised remarks, he also said the country's military complex needs more state support to develop its potential. "The portfolio of orders for Russian military products is now serious. It is tens of billions of dollars. And it is necessary to actively increase the volume of export deliveries," Mr Putin said. He also singled out weapons that utilise Artificial Intelligence (AI). "The future of the global arms market lies with such technology. Strong competition will unfold here, and is already unfolding, for which we must be prepared," Mr Putin said. Arpan Rai24 May 2025 05:45 Former Ukrainian commander says Ukraine cannot regain all lost territory Former Ukrainian commander and now ambassador to the UK, Valery Zaluzhnyi, said Ukraine should abandon hope of regaining all territory lost to Russia. "I hope that there are not people in this room who still hope for some kind of miracle or lucky sign that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022, and that there will be great happiness afterward," Zaluzhnyi said in a speech published by the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet on Friday. "My personal opinion is that the enemy still has resources, forces and means to launch strikes on our territory and attempt specific offensive operations.' Russia occupied the Crimea peninsula in 2014, and its armed forces now control about a fifth of Ukrainian territory. Arpan Rai24 May 2025 05:28 Russia's Lavrov vows response to drone attacks on Moscow Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said Ukraine will be held responsible for drone attacks on Moscow. The Russian minister said the surge of Ukrainian drone attacks – some 800 sent against Russian targets over the last three days – was "a direct consequence" of support for Ukraine by European Union countries whose leaders visited Kyiv in recent days. "We are certain that they will be held accountable for their share of responsibility for these crimes," Mr Lavrov said, referring to the European countries. "This is clearly an attempt to disrupt peace talks and undermine progress made in Istanbul following the agreements between the presidents of Russia and the United States... We will continue this work no matter what provocations there may be." Arpan Rai
Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Western leaders are naive to think they can negotiate with Putin, says Navalny's widow
The widow of Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader, has said Western politicians are being 'naive' for thinking they can negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Speaking at the Hay Festival in Powys, Wales, Yulia Navalnaya said Western leaders were wrong to think the Russian leader would abide by the same norms as democratic countries when it came to diplomatic talks. The 48-year-old accused Donald Trump, the US president, of giving Putin more power by negotiating directly with him over the future of Ukraine. The US president spent two hours on the phone with Putin on Monday, in a call Mr Trump described as 'excellent'. Ms Navalnaya made the comments in an interview with Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor, who asked if world leaders were right to feel 'powerless' over Putin's grip on the country. She replied: 'I'm not sure about that. I don't want to sound rude, but Western politicians are being a little bit naive because they think that they are having negotiations with Putin, that they can have diplomatic relations, that there are rules, which every democratic country has. 'But it's not. Putin's not living in a democratic country.' ' He has no rules,' she continued. 'And that's the problem. It's not about they don't understand him or they're doing the wrong steps. They are just trying to be politicians, normal politicians, which are chosen in normal democratic elections.' Ms Navalnaya met with Joe Biden, Mr Trump's predecessor, in February 2024, days after her husband was killed in a Russian prison. Reflecting on their meeting, the mother-of-two said she felt 'grateful' to have met the former president and said her family's situation 'touched him a lot'. Asked how she felt seeing Mr Biden's successor supposedly echo Kremlin talking points, she said: 'Trump, you can like him or not, but he's elected president of a big country. He participated in real elections. He won these elections. And all his negotiations with Putin gives Putin, who's really a tyrant, more power.' She added: 'During the last few years, nobody had been meeting with him. He was just sitting, he was scared to go anywhere because there is war, because he could be arrested somewhere. Now… all these negotiations give him again more power.'
The Independent
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump's involvement in Ukraine peace talks ‘giving Putin more power', Yulia Navalnaya says
Yulia Navalnaya has said Donald Trump's negotiations with Russia on Ukraine are making Vladimir Putin 'feel stronger'. The Russian activist and widow of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said Trump speaking to the Russian president 'like they're equal' is making him more powerful. She made the remarks while speaking at a sold-out event with Alastair Campbell at Wales' Hay Festival on Friday, which The Independent is once again partnering with. 'Putin is crime person he is a kind of mafia boss. He kills people. He started the war,' Ms Navalnaya said when asked how she felt about Trump's involvement in Ukraine peace talks. 'Trump - you can like him or not - but he's an elected president of a big country. He participated in real elections, he won these elections. 'But all of these negotiations happening like they're equal gives Putin - who is a tyrant - more power. 'I'm sure it was very difficult for Putin and that he suffered a lot during these last few years because nobody would have been meetings with him. 'He was just sitting in Moscow scared to go anywhere because he was at war and he could be arrested somewhere. 'But now all of these negotiations have given him again more power. I'm absolutely sure Putin now feels more strength and like he can do whatever he wants because he feels people want to speak with him, people want to negotiate with him.' She added: 'Trump promised to stop this war and he's trying to show that he's capable of doing it. But it's very difficult in the end to do it with a person who promises something that you can't trust.' Ms Navalnya's late husband was arrested in 2021 after returning to Russia and had been serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on a number of charges, which were widely rejected by the international community. His death was announced by Russian authorities on 16 February 2024 while serving time in a 'special regime' penal colony in central Russia. The 47-year-old had reportedly fallen unwell after a walk, before losing consciousness. Ms Navalnaya has previously claimed Putin is responsible for Mr Navalny's death and today revealed how she found out about her husband's death through a news story. 'I was at Munich Security Conference just at regular meetings in my hotel room just preparing. Then I just opened [my phone] and it was written, 'Alexei Navalny dead in prison',' adding she had seen false headlines about her husband being dead in media at least once before. Since her husband's death, Navalnaya has vowed to continue his fight. Last July, Russia issued an arrest warrant for Ms Navalnaya herself, over accusations she has participated in an 'extremist' group. She described her late husband as 'courageous, funny and the was best man in the world' after walking in to a standing ovation at the event to discuss his book 'Patriot'. When asked if she hoped Russia would be a democracy one day at the end of the talk, she replied simply: 'Of course.' Spread over 11 days, the 38th spring edition of the annual cultural event is set in Hay-on-Wye, the idyllic and picturesque 'Town of Books'. The star-studded lineup includes Mary Trump, Michael Sheen, Jameela Jamil, and more.
