The 'accidental' politicians: Meet three women risking everything to fight for democracy

• Yulia Navalnaya has taken on the political cause of her late husband, Alexei Navalny: "I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. Continue to fight for our country. And I invite you to stand next to me."
• Lisa Yasko, 33 years old and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, said she can relate. "I believed I should be in politics to make a change," she told CNBC.
• Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader of Belarus, described herself as an "accidental politician."

Yulia Navalnaya "did not have a choice."

That's what one Ukrainian lawmaker said of the wife of the late Alexei Navalny, who vowed to continue her husband's political work fighting for democracy in Russia after he died in a Siberian prison last month.

As the first reports of Navalny's death started to emerge, Navalnaya was in Munich at a security conference. At first, she was not sure whether to believe the reports.

Then, she took to the main stage: "I thought: Should I stand here before you or should I go back to my children? And then I thought: What would have Alexei done in my place? And I'm sure that he would have been standing here on this stage."

Since that moment, Yulia Navalnaya has turned her husband's mission into hers.

"I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. Continue to fight for our country. And I invite you to stand next to me," she said in a video message, shared on X, just a few days later.

Lisa Yasko, 33 years old and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, said she can relate. Her partner is in jail in Georgia for opposing the ruling authorities.

Hailing from Kyiv, Yasko became a political activist in 2014 after the so-called Maidan Uprising, which saw Ukrainians take to the streets to demonstrate in favor of closer ties with the