Navalny’s widow appeared to farewell him with a post on social media showing a picture of them together with the words, “I love you”.

Yulia Navalnaya’s post on Instagram, the first since her husband died, showed a picture of the two together, their heads touching as they watched a performance.

It brought a personal note to the loss she expressed more formally on a public stage just hours after her husband’s death was announced by the Russian prison service.

On Friday afternoon, Navalnaya appeared before an audience of leaders, diplomats and other officials at the Munich Security Conference, saying she had weighed coming on stage or immediately leaving to be with the couple’s two children, Daria and Zakhar, deciding her husband would want her to speak.

If the news of his death was true, Navalnaya, 47, said then, “I want [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, his entire entourage, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband.”

Navalny’s last post on Telegram before he died was a Valentine’s message for his wife.

“Babe, you and I have everything like in the song: cities between us, airfield take-off lights, blue blizzards and thousands of kilometres. But I feel that you are there every second, and I love you more and more.”

Navalnaya would be back in a public forum on Monday – the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said she would attend the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.

Loading

Navalnaya always supported her husband in his battles with the Russian authorities, attending his many court appearances, standing beside him at rallies and waiting for release from many prison terms.

She was born in Moscow and she attended the prestigious Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. She met Navalny while on holiday in Turkey in 1998 and fell in love.

“I did not get married to a promising lawyer or an opposition leader: I married a young man named Alexei,” Yulia said once.

Outrage over the death of Navalny has been swift and widespread.

Loading

Western leaders led by US President Joe Biden paid tribute to Navalny’s courage and accused Putin of being responsible for the death. Britain said there would be consequences for Russia.

“Russia has crossed the line, another one,” said co-ordinator of the Navalny Team in Australia, Galina Seredina.

“Millions of people now feel that this final and last chance for an alternative Russia is lost.”

Seredina said that a reformed and democratic Russia could have been built “if the leaders of the free world were stronger and had political will to cut all connections with Russia”.

“Instead, the world has been only watching how Putin has been slowly killing and torturing Alexei for more than three years.”

Navalny was the only person Putin was afraid of, Seredina said.

Dissident Russians in Australia– some of whom reject the legitimacy of Putin as the leader of the country – held memorials for Navalny over the weekend.

“Now, there’s nobody to stop [Putin] unless the world finally changes the strategy from ‘deeply concerned’ to ‘no deals with the person who is stealing the elections and killing his opponents’.”

Loading

The Kremlin said the West’s reaction was unacceptable and “absolutely rabid”. Putin has yet to comment on Navalny’s death.

Reuters with Chris Zappone

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.