Alexei Navalny: The women fighting against Russian corruption
image copyrightGetty ImagesIn the male-dominated world of Russian politics the women around jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny appear to symbolise his drive for change.
They are playing major roles as he prepares his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) for parliamentary elections in September, despite a police crackdown.
Russia's parliament is overwhelmingly loyal to President Vladimir Putin and dominated by men. Women form only 16% of the lower house, the State Duma, and about 17% of the upper house, the Federation Council.
Men do play a key part in Navalny's team: Leonid Volkov, now in Lithuania, and FBK director Ivan Zhdanov. And the FBK has dozens of activists across Russia.
But these are the women in the vanguard of Navalny's campaign to transform Russia.
Yulia Navalnaya
Married to Navalny since 2000, she says her life now involves "police stations, courts and home searches".
They are both 44 and met on holiday in Turkey in 1998. They live in a Moscow flat and for most of their married life Yulia Navalnaya has been mainly a homemaker, raising their daughter Darya - who is now studying in the US - and son Zakhar. She had previously studied international relations at a Moscow university and later worked in a bank.
She is now reported to be in Germany, away from the stifling state surveillance and media spotlight.
Women across Russia have posted photos of themselves wearing red on Instagram in solidarity with Yulia, since she wore a red top in court on 2 February, the day her husband was jailed for two years and eight months. The trend was started by a fashion journalist, Katya Fedorova.
The hashtag for the posts is "Don't be sad, everything will be fine" - Navalny's last words to Yulia as he returned to jail.
His battle to survive nerve agent poisoning last August thrust her into a more political role, as Russian state agents were blamed for the attack, though the Kremlin denied any involvement.
She was fined 20,000 roubles (£195; $270) for attending a protest in support of her husband on 31 January. She fully supports his anti-corruption campaign.
Yulia Navalnaya says it was her decision to airlift her husband to Berlin from a Siberian hospital last August. She told an interviewer that it would be impossible to find the real cause of Navalny's illness if he remained in Russia. Western toxicologists identified the poison as Novichok nerve agent.
Navalny told YouTube interviewer Yuri Dud that Yulia had helped him recover from hallucinations. "I understood that this was Yulia coming to me, adjusting my pillow... I waited for her all the time."
Lyubov Sobol
The 33-year-old lawyer is one of the best-known figures in Navalny's team and is currently under house arrest.
She and many other Navalny supporters were detained for allegedly breaching Covid-19 rules by holding rallies.
She produces the Navalny Live YouTube channel, exposing alleged official corruption to an audience of millions.
A highlight of her campaigning career came in August 2019, when she posted a clip of officials dragging her out of the Moscow electoral committee building while she was lying on a sofa.
She had been on a month-long hunger strike and sit-in, as authorities had barred her and some other independent candidates from standing for election to the Moscow city assembly.
She now plans to run for election to the Russian parliament in September.
Lyubov Sobol began working as a lawyer for Navalny's anti-corruption project in 2011. She gave birth to a daughter, Miroslava, in 2014.
She believes an attack on her husband in 2016 was linked to her campaigning. He fell ill, but recovered, after an assailant injected a chemical into his leg.
Her anti-corruption investigations have involved her in a string of court cases. She and Navalny were sued by catering tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has the nickname "Putin's chef" because of his close ties to the Kremlin. They were ordered to pay him huge damages. Prigozhin and many other Putin aides are under Western sanctions.
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