Alexei Navalny’s wife said Friday that she can’t be sure her husband is really dead — because Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies “lie constantly.”

Yulia Navalnaya, in an emotional speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, added that Putin “will be brought to justice” if in fact her dissident husband’s reported death is true.

The Kremlin dictator and his cohorts “will be punished for what they have done to our country, for what they have done to my family, for what they have done to my husband,” said the 47-year-old Navalnaya, who was married to her imprisoned husband for 24 years.

“They will be brought to justice. And this day will come soon,” she said.

Looking distraught but stoic, Navalnaya told the conference — whose attendees included Vice President Kamala Harris — that world leaders need to unite to “defeat this evil, to defeat this horrifying regime in Russia.

“This regime and Vladimir Putin should be personally held accountable for all the atrocities they have committed in our country over the past years,” she added.

Navalnaya, the mother of Navalny’s two children — daughter Daria and son Zakhar — spoke just hours after Russia’s prison service announced the death of her husband, claiming he collapsed while on a walk at the remote prison where he had been transferred in December.

Navalnaya said that after hearing the “horrific news,” she debated whether to remain at the conference or immediately jet off to see their children.

What we know about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny

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• Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, Alexei Navalny, died in a brutal penal colony, on Friday February 16, 2024.
• Navalny had been jailed since 2021 after returning home following a nerve agent poisoning widely assumed to have been an assassination attempt.
• Navalny’s death comes a day after he appeared in a court hearing via a video link, where he was heard making jokes with the judge.
• Navalny rose to prominence in Russia more than a decade ago by making fun of the elite class around Russian President Putin and voicing allegations of corruption on a vast scale. 
• Navalny, 47, got married to his wife, Yulia, in 2000 and was a father of two.
• Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service claimed that “the convict” collapsed and died after he “felt unwell” during a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in remote Kharp, about 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow.

“And then I thought, ‘What would Alexei have done in my place?’ And I’m sure that he would have been standing here on this stage,” she said.

Navalnaya’s brief but powerful speech was met with a standing ovation from the audience.

Her husband, Putin’s fiercest critic, was last seen in public Thursday when he attended a court hearing by video link that showed him looking healthy and cracking jokes.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, was quoted by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta as saying that when she last saw him Monday, her son had been “alive, healthy and happy.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Navalnaya at the summit in Germany and expressed his condolences, the State Department said.

Blinken “reiterated that Russia is responsible for his death.”