Can anyone take on Putin and survive?

Sam Hawley: He had a vision of a democratic Russia, of a nation that could sit alongside its European neighbours, and he was a constant thorn in the side of the Russian President. So now Alexei Navalny is dead, who will take on Vladimir Putin and who's next on his hit list? I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.

Rajan Menon: Hi, my name is Rajan Menon. I direct the Grand Strategy Program at Defence Priorities and was until recently an academic.

Sam Hawley: Rajan, a lot's been said about Alexei Navalny in the last few days.

News clip: World leaders have condemned the death of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, laying the blame at the feet of the Kremlin.

Joe Biden: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin's brutality.

News clip: Russia's prison system said he lost consciousness after a walk and couldn't be revived. He was serving more than 30 years in prison for charges he claimed were politically motivated.

Sam Hawley: The significance of what he did to fight for democracy in Russia, it's lost on few people.

Rajan Menon: Yes, indeed. He made the case that there is no reason that Russia cannot be a European style democracy. But I think the aspect of his campaign, if one can call it that, that hit home particularly to Russians is his attempt to expose corruption at the highest levels. In fact, he coined a phrase that resonated with people. He said the current government consists of crooks and thieves.

Sam Hawley: Some people have compared him to Nelson Mandela. He survived threats, poisoning, jail time. Just remind me of what he went through in the lead up to his death.

Rajan Menon: Well, he is a 47-year-old man who has been poisoned and almost died. The poisoning occurs, I said, in August of 2020.

News clip: On a plane bound for Moscow, paramedics rush to help a passenger in pain. Alexei Navalny was so ill, pilots had to make an emergency landing.

Rajan Menon: He then was given medical attention that saved his life, but he was in a coma. He then was taken to Germany and Putin's expectation was good riddance, he will stay there. Putin, by the way, never uses his name. He always refers to him as either the patient or the prisoner.

News clip 2: Last month, President Putin dismissed accusations he was behind the near deadly poison attack on Mr Navalny. "Who needs him? If someone had wanted to poison him, they'd have finished him off."

Rajan Menon: So the Germans revived him, I think, after three weeks or so. And he immediately said, well, I'm going back. He was cracking jokes and very jovial. And so, you know, his courage is exemplary. The thing with Navalny is there will doubtless be other figures who will come forward as opponents of Putin. But his shoes are very, very big shoes to fill. And it's very rare to find people with that kind of courage.

Sam Hawley: His wife, Yulia, travelled to Germany for the Munich security conference straight after his death. She received a standing ovation. People were really moved by what she had to say, weren't they?

Rajan Menon: Absolutely. She just heard that her husband had died. And her poise and courage and the articulateness with which she spoke was absolutely remarkable. But then she's a remarkable woman in her own right.

Yulia Navalnaya: I was thinking for a long time, what should I do? Should I go here or should I fly straight to see my kids? But then I thought, what would Alexei do if he was here? And I'm sure that he would have chosen to be here, to come to this.

Sam Hawley: Russian authorities say he felt unwell after a walk in the yard at the Arctic penal colony where he was being held and lost consciousness. But what do you think happened to him?

Rajan Menon: You know, the circumstances of his death remain mysterious. The official version is, and it was given almost immediately, that he suffered a blood clot. And doctors who have been asked this question, is that plausible, have said it's impossible to diagnose the fact that he had a blood clot so soon after he was given medical attention. But if I might, just a brief word on the conditions in which he was kept. For prolonged periods, he was kept in solitary confinement. Now that means a cell of six meters by six meters, a window that cannot open, a mattress and a stool affixed to the floor. Once you wake up in the morning, the mattress is taken away and all you can do is sit on this steel stool or lean against the wall. You're not given any writing materials except for a very brief period of time and your rations are severely reduced. So the conditions under which he was kept, forget the long jail stretches is bad enough, the conditions under which he was kept were abysmally bad.

Sam Hawley: Terribly cold.

Rajan Menon: Absolutely, absolutely.

Sam Hawley: And of course Alexei Navalny, he was always worried that he'd be assassinated. In an interview with CBS News in 2017, he said he tried not to think about it too much, otherwise he couldn't get on with the job he was trying to do.

CBS journalist: What do you think the probability is that you will end up in prison?

Alexei Navalny : Mr Putin personally decided such things and no one understands what's in his head.

CBS journalist: What do you think the chances are you'll end up dead?

Alexei Navalny: Well, like, you know, 50 per cent. I would be killed or I would not be killed.

Sam Hawley: He also spoke to CNN in a documentary in 2022 called Navalny. He had a message to his supporters about what they should do if he was killed.

Alexei Navalny: My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple, not give up.

Sam Hawley: And he said, you know, if they decide to kill me, it means that the fight for democracy is incredibly strong. Well, he

Rajan Menon: Well, he two messages, right? One is if they kill me, it shows that they're panicking, that we are making a difference. And the second thing he said was, regardless of what happens to me, whether I'm alive or dead, don't stand still, keep fighting.

Alexei Navalny: We don't realise how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good people to do nothing. So don't be inactive.

Sam Hawley: Rajan, how have Russians responded to his death?

Rajan Menon: Several Russians, more than several, I would say about a hundred, tried to go out in the street and put flowers in various locations to honour Navalny. 

Russian paying tribute to Navalny: He fought for He fought all of us and now we have to at least honour his memory.

Russian paying tribute to Navalny: I just sincerely feel sorry for him, to be honest. I can't say anything else. Just sorry and sad that this has happened.

Rajan Menon: But very quickly the goon squad arrived and they were taken away and the flowers were taken away as well. It is very clear that Putin does not want Navalny's death to snowball into anything approaching mass protest. And so the cracking down immediately was a sign that if you're thinking of coming out in the street in larger numbers, we are ready for you and we will take very severe action.

Rajan Menon: He's not the only one, by the way, to kind of fall by the wayside as it were in trying to oppose Mr Putin.

Sam Hawley: No, there's a long list of opponents of Vladimir Putin who have either wound up poisoned or dead.

Rajan Menon: Well, I count from 2003 onward 10. Some of the more prominent ones are Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead at the age of 55 on the Kremlin Bridge. He was a deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, the president who preceded Vladimir Putin and a vocal Putin critic. Much more long ago, in 2006, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, age 45, who was an investigative reporter and specialised in documenting human rights abuses during the war in Chechnya, was shot dead in her apartment. Who is the next person you want to mention? The next thing I'm going to mention, I'm sure everyone knows, it's Alexander Litvinenko, who was a KGB agent and then joined the successor agency, the FSB. At the age of 34, he was poisoned with polonium and died. Navalny, by the way, was poisoned with an agent called Novichok. Now, both of these are agents that are very, very difficult to get hold of. Hence the suspicion that it was state agencies that did it. If I could mention one other name, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British educated journalist, a documentary filmmaker, comes from a storied family of human rights activists. He is serving a 25-year jail term. That is the largest single-strike jail term that's been given. He, too, was poisoned on two occasions, 2015 and 2017. He's alive, but he's in prison.

Sam Hawley: Rajan, let's now look at what this means, his death, for the fight for democracy in Russia. There is, of course, a so-called election this year. Who can replace Navalny now to take up this fight for democracy in Russia?

Rajan Menon: You know, people like Navalny and Nelson Mandela and Vladimir Kara-Murza, the man I mentioned, who's still in prison, don't come around very often. And so it will take time. There's no immediate figure that can step into this. Can Yulia Navalnaya and his wife do it? Possibly. But the same thing may happen to Yulia Navalnaya. If she comes back and starts an opposition campaign, she, too, could be in jail. And the fact that she's a woman isn't necessarily protection. If she decides to come back and say, I'm going to pick up where my husband left off, because she believed in many of the same things and is an extremely poised and courageous woman, then certainly she is within their gun sights, so to speak.

Sam Hawley: Oh, gosh. OK. All right. So she does plan to return to Russia?

Rajan Menon: Oh, I think without a doubt she will. I mean, she, I think at some point said that, what would Alexei do? And I think the answer is quite clear.

Sam Hawley: Incredibly brave if she does. Rajen, let's have a look now at how the world is and should be responding to Navalny's death. Joe Biden, the US president, says Putin is responsible. And other world leaders, including our own Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, are saying the same thing.

Anthony Albanese: We hold Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime responsible for this death in prison.

Sam Hawley: So they're all in furious agreement about that. But what should the world do about it?

Rajan Menon: Well, the chorus of condemnation, as witnessed in the names that you mentioned, is very loud, particularly in the Western world. In the other parts of the world, not so much. But, you know, Putin, the relationship between Russia and the West, especially in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, are so bad that I think the Russian government has reached the conclusion that they don't give a damn what the West says. And as for further action, given the raft of sanctions that we've put on them, the fact that the sanctions haven't had any immediate effect in terms of changing the government's course in Ukraine, there's not a lot more punishment than can be meted out. You can tighten up sanctions and so on. The record of sanctions make a difference is actually quite poor.

Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Rajan, Navalny is gone. But the fight's not over, is it, for democracy in Russia?

Rajan Menon: No, no. Going back to Tsarist Russia, there is a long tradition of very courageous people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to go up against the state. The country has never been lacking for dissidents. The real question is, can they ignite enough of a resonance from the grassroots population that stirs up rebellion on a large scale that really makes the regime vulnerable? That we haven't seen. The combination of rewards for cooperating with the regime, that is not breaking with it if you're part of the power structure, and repression for going against it if you're on the outside, that combination has proved very, very effective.

Sam Hawley: Rajan Menon is the director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defence Priorities. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, with audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. To get in touch with the team, please email us on abcnewsdaily at abc.net.au. Thanks for listening.