Mrs. Navalny said, "I'm coming home after the poisoning crisis...He didn't want to give in."

Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of Alexei Navalny, a Russian anti-government activist who died in prison, said her husband had returned to Russia even after suffering a poisoning crisis because he "did not want to back down or give in to power."

Navalnaya said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro in time for the publication of her late husband Navalny's memoir that her husband's return to Russia was "a heavy choice, not reckless action."

Navalny, Russia's leading anti-government figure, was on the verge of death in August 2020 after collapsing from poisoning on a flight from Siberia to Moscow, before returning to Russia in January 2021 after being treated in Germany.

Navalny was arrested by Russian authorities shortly after returning home and served in prison before his death in February this year.

Asked by prison guards and others why he returned to Russia, Navalny wrote in his diary on January 17, "I don't want to give up or betray my country," adding, "To have meaning in faith, I have to stand up for it and be ready to sacrifice if necessary."

"We both knew there were risks, but my husband wanted to be in Russia and change Russia," Navalny's wife said. "Whether it's free or in prison, he wanted to be with his people."

"The road to victory may be very far away, but I am confident that there is a chance," he said. "In and out of Russia, Putin's opponents remain silent in fear, but this does not mean that they do not exist."

"Not everyone can be heroes like their husbands, but they have to do something in their own way and continue this fight," he said.

"Putin's power comes from scaring and intimidating people," Mrs. Navalny said, adding that "that's why their main power against him is not to fear him."

Navalny's memoir, "The Patriot," left before his death, will be published simultaneously in the United States and France on the 22nd local time.