Was Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, photographed in an embrace with her alleged lover after her husband's death? No, that's not true: A photo of her hugging Russian entrepreneur Evgeny Chichvarkin is a fake, a reverse image search shows.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on TikTok on February 27, 2024, with a caption above and below the doctored image, translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff, reading:
The body of Alexei Navalny was received by his mother, the body of Yulia Navalnaya was received by her lover Evgeny Chichvarkin.So much for her not being an actress.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Mar 5 19:46:06 2024 UTC)
The fake image used as evidence of Navalnaya's alleged relationship with the Russian-born businessman is an altered photograph from 2013, a reverse image search conducted on March 15, 2024, revealed (archived here). In the original photo taken by Evgeny Feldman for AFP, Navalnaya is hugging her husband after a judge in the Russian town of Kirov freed Navalny from prison (archived here) on July 19, 2013, a day after a protest in Moscow for his release.
The original image, a screenshot of which can be seen below, illustrated a Los Angeles Times story on the surprise release published on July 19, 2013 (archived here). A cropped version appeared in a photo gallery (archived here) published on The Washington Post's website on the same day.
False allegations against the former leading political opposition figure Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia, who has since his death claimed his opposition leadership status, have increased and can be considered part of an effort traced to Kremlin state-funded propaganda resources to discredit the opposition leaders. Lead Stories has previously debunked similar claims here.
(Source: latimes.com screenshot taken on Wed Mar 13 17:29:41 2024 UTC)
