Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian anti-corruption crusader and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, has called on European lawmakers to investigate Russia's leadership, which she characterized as an "organized criminal gang" led by President Vladimir Putin and his allies.
Speaking to the European Parliament on February 28, almost two weeks after her husband was pronounced dead at an Arctic prison where he was serving time on what his supporters and the West call trumped-up charges, Navalnaya said an investigation of financial flows in the West would lead European lawmakers straight to Putin.
"You aren't dealing with a politician but with a bloody mobster. Putin is the leader of an organized criminal gang. This includes poisoners and assassins but they're just puppets. The most important thing is the people close to Putin -- his friends, associates, and keepers of mafia money," she said in a speech delivered in English.
"You, and all of us, must fight the criminal gang. And the political innovation here is to apply the methods of fighting organized crime, not political competition. Not statements of concern but the search for mafia associates in your countries, for discreet lawyers and financiers who are helping Putin and his friends to hide money," she added.
Navalny's death was reported on February 16, prompting an outpouring of grief and mounting outrage in Russia and around the world as the authorities refused to release his body to his mother amid suspicions about the cause of his death, which was officially attributed to "sudden death syndrome."
Navalnaya has accused Putin directly of having her husband, one of the president's most vocal critics, killed.
The Kremlin has rejected all accusations that it played a part in Navalny's death, while Navalnaya has pledged to carry on her late husband's work in exposing corruption in Russia and pushing for democratic freedoms and rights that Putin has rolled back during the more than two decades that he has ruled the country.
With Russians heading to the polls in a presidential election scripted to hand Putin another term, Navalnaya has called upon the West to refuse to recognize the March 17 balloting.
"Putin must answer for what he has done to my country. Putin must answer for what he has done to a neighboring, peaceful country. And Putin must answer for everything he has done to Aleksei," she said in her speech to lawmakers in Strasbourg.
In a brief interview with RFE/RL, Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, paid tribute to Navalny, whose death she said was "horrific."
"The reaction we have seen since his death, the outrage and the clampdown by Russian authorities on anyone expressing that outrage is a symbol to us of the situation that Russia is in at the moment, which is absolutely the case of how we would never recognize the results of the upcoming Russian elections," Metsola said.
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European Parliament Chief: 'We Would Never Recognize The Results Of The Upcoming Russian Election'
Putin -- who has an official annual salary of around $140,000 -- has been accused of amassing a fortune estimated by some at as much as $200 billion, while also doling out billions to his closest allies, through a tangled web of financial entities.
Navalny's team in 2022 published details it uncovered of a $700 million superyacht they said showed the vessel was Putin's.
In early 2021, Navalny's team issued an investigation shining a spotlight on a $1.35 billion estate on the Black Sea's exclusive Gelendzhik Bay that was allegedly built for Putin.
SEE ALSO: Russian Firm That Created Secure Systems For Government Also Worked On 'Putin's Palace'Putin has consistently denied any allegations that he has amassed a fortune. In his income and asset declaration from 2020, he listed a modest apartment, three Soviet-era cars, and a small camping trailer handed down by his late father.
"You cannot hurt Putin with another resolution or another set of sanctions that is no different from the previous ones. You can't defeat him by thinking he's a man of principle who has morals and rules," Navalnaya said, calling for more effective action against the money flows of the ruling elite.
"If you really want to defeat Putin, you have to become an innovator. And you have to stop being boring," she said.