Thrust into her new role as the face of Russian opposition, Yulia Navalnaya is ready for her revolution

IN RUSSIAN CUSTOM, THE SOUL OF THE DEAD is believed to remain on earth for 40 days, finishing its business among the living before it moves on to the afterlife. Surviving friends and relatives often spend this period in mourning and reflection. But the loved ones of Alexei Navalny, Russia's leading dissident, did not have much freedom to abide by this custom after he died in an Arctic prison camp on Feb. 16.

- SIMON SHUSTER

For them, and especially for his wife Yulia Navalnaya, the weeks that followed were a blur of studio lights, airports, hotels, and video calls. Between consoling their two children and being consoled by them, she met with President Joe Biden in San Francisco and addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. She accused Vladimir Putin of killing her husband and implored the Russian people to help her get revenge. Along the way, Navalnaya took on a new role, no longer the first lady of the Russian opposition, but now its figurehead.

It was in this new role that she agreed in early April to an interview with TIME, a little more than 40 days after her husband was killed. "There has been so little time to think, to plan, to process," she admitted. "But we have to keep working, to keep moving forward."

For her husband's followers in Russia, the way forward looks far from clear. It took well over a decade of activism for Navalny to earn his place within the opposition movement as the only dissident to pose a threat to Putin's rule. Even after his imprisonment in 2021, Navalny continued to run his revolutionary network, to campaign against corruption, and to spread his promise that Russia would one day become a normal European democracy. That hope dimmed after Navalny's death-for many, it was extinguished.