Yulia attracted close public attention in the late summer and early fall of 2020, when her husband was urgently hospitalized in Omsk, Russia on suspicion of poisoning. She demanded that Alexei be released to Germany for treatment, and even turned directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin. After German experts confirmed Navalny's poisoning, Russian physician Leonid Roshal said that no poisonous substance was found in Navalny's samples in Russia and suggested creating a Russian-German team on this matter. Yulia accused him of acting "not as a doctor, but as the voice of the state." She followed her husband to Berlin, was next to him at the Charité hospital, and Navalny later posted a message “Yulia, you saved me”, which, according to a correspondent of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, “seems to forever go down in the history of Russian politics”. Novaya Gazeta and its audience named Navalnaya the Hero of the Year-2020. All key European media outlets closely followed her activity and quoted her posts on social networks.