Name Gaffe: US Prez Biden Meets Navalny’s Widow Yulia, Mistakenly Calls Her ‘Yolanda’
US President Joe Biden met the widow and daughter of the late Russian activist Alexei Navalny on Thursday in California.
The US President later while addressing the press appeared to forget the name of the fiercest Putin critic’s wife he met minutes earlier.
“This morning I had the honour of meeting with Alexei Navalny’s wife and daughter, and to state the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage and it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that. We are going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow,” the US President said.
Today, I met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya – Aleksey Navalny's loved ones – to express my condolences for their devastating loss.
Aleksey's legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha, and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights. pic.twitter.com/aiCcgTrws3
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 22, 2024
“But one thing that was made clear to me is that Yolanda is gonna, she’s gonna continue the fight he had underway. So we’re not letting up,” Biden said, mistaking Yulia for Yolanda.
Biden’s meeting with Yulia Navalnaya and the couple’s daughter Dasha Navalnaya came six days after Alexei Navalny’s death in the remote penal colony in Arctic Russia. Prison authorities in the remote penal colony of IK-7 in Kharp last week said that Navalny collapsed after taking a walk and died and ambulances were unable to resuscitate him.
Western leaders and Navalny’s family and supporters believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to kill the dissident, with an aim to project his strongman image ahead of the rubber-stamp elections.
The White House is yet to comment on the name mixup and officials also did not dispute that Biden slipped up during the presser.
The gaffe could be used by Biden’s critics to raise questions regarding his ability to lead the US due to his age. According to an ABC/Ipsos poll released earlier this month, 86% of voters believe he is too old to lead the nation for another four years.
The US President will announce a new package of sanctions Friday against Russia in response to the death of Navalny. Biden, previously on several occasions, said that Putin will face dire consequences if something were to happen to Navalny. But he said that Russia and Putin already have faced plenty of consequences.
“That was three years ago. In the meantime, they faced a hell of a lot of consequences. I told you we’d be announcing sanctions on Russia. We’ll have a major package announced on Friday, and I’ll be happy to sit with you all while doing that,” Biden said.
Yulia Navalnaya, the 47-year-old economist married to Alexei, since 2000, is seen as the possible successor to her husband and is poised to be the next democracy advocate of Russia.