Defying the Kremlin kleptocrat takes enormous courage

Watching the newly widowed woman publicly projecting so much strength and courage just hours after learning of her husband's death brings a lump to the throat.

Her voice steady and resolute, her face barely concealing the rage within, she vows to continue the fight her husband led which saw him jailed, poisoned, exiled before returning and being jailed again, this time in a remote Siberian penal colony.

He died, his jailers say, from "sudden death syndrome", an affliction uncannily common among critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The syndrome strikes in a range of imaginative ways. Suicide. Mishaps with open windows. Contact with lethal nerve agents. Shamanic rituals gone wrong. Exploding aircraft. Unexplained gunshots.

Yulia Navalny's dignity, determination and grace amid unimaginable grief stand in stark contrast to her cold-eyed nemesis. She speaks out at considerable risk. He remains silent, leaving the denials of any involvement in opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny's death to his henchmen.

She says her husband's death is not a sign of Putin's strength; it's a sign of his weakness.

Witness the ordinary Russians laying flowers in honour of Navalny, hundreds of them carted off brutally by police, their roses deemed symbols of extremism. Carrying flowers in Moscow, one young woman tells the camera, now makes you a suspect. Colour in a drab winter now a thought crime.

These acts of defiance carry risks far beyond Russia's borders.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, who had defected to the UK was murdered with polonium-laced tea.

In 2018, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia almost died after being poisoned with the nerve agent novichok. Three months later a British citizen died from exposure to the same deadly toxin, which her partner had found in a perfume bottle and handed to her.

Last week, Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine in August 2023, was reportedly found riddled with bullets in an underground car park in Villajoyosa in Spain. Right on cue, Russia has not only denied involvement but claims Kuzminov's death was faked. Kuzminov was a fierce critic of Russia's war in Ukraine.

In December, Germany accused Russia of dispatching a hitman to kill ethnic Chechen Georgian Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a Berlin park in 2019. After a court found Russian Vadim Krasikov guilty of the murder, it expelled two Russian diplomats in response.

The court ruled the murder was carried out "on the order of state agencies of the Russian Federation" and sentenced Vadim, who had travelled to Germany on a false passport, to life in prison.

Predictably, Russia continues to deny any involvement but the message is clear: cross the Kremlin kleptocrat and he will get you.

That makes the acts of defiance - from the small ones like laying flowers to the large ones like returning from exile, knowing you will be imprisoned and likely die, as Alexei Navalny did, or defecting in a helicopter because you oppose the war - so inspiring.

Saturday will mark the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It has not been, as Putin thought, a walkover. Two days after the tanks rolled over the border multiple news sources carried one of the greatest expressions of defiance ever uttered.

When offered evacuation from Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly said: "I need ammunition, not a ride."

After two years, he needs that ammunition more than ever.

But will this latest Russian outrage sway the Republicans who've held up billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine? Not likely. Will it deter Donald Trump from cosying up to Putin, with his reckless comments about NATO? No chance.

And there the contrast is stark again. Yulia Navalny and Zelenskyy. Beacons of courage. Trump and his Republican acolytes. Craven, self-interested moral bankrupts, willing to give comfort to a despot if it suits their political circumstance.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Are you moved by the courage of Russians who stand up to Vladimir Putin? Is the war in Ukraine a lost cause? Or should the West step up and provide the munitions Kyiv so desperately needs? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au

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THEY SAID IT: "Courage is grace under pressure." - Ernest Hemingway

YOU SAID IT: Peter Dutton's political tactics carry the risk of encouraging people smugglers by signalling Australia's back door is unlocked, even if this isn't the case. It's time the opposition found new material rather than reprising its greatest hits like "Dead, buried. cremated."

Rob writes: "Dutton needs to be reminded that 40 boat arrivals pale in comparison to the 100,000-plus visa 'overstayers' who flew in under the Coalition. The gutting of the immigration department under the Coalition has contributed to the lack of compliance. Not to mention the unsavoury types who have reaped hundreds of millions of dollars from lucrative contracts to supervise immigration. This warrants a serious investigation. Dutton should be judged on his shoddy handling of the Home Affairs Department not his rhetoric."

"Dutton is telling potential immigrants and people smugglers that Australia is now easy to enter," writes John. "How stupid is that? The only response in his repertoire is to oppose whatever the government says and does, even when that opposition is against his own avowed policies. He has simply lost the plot and should be sacked. He is only doing immense damage with his one-shot interjections."

Arthur writes: "Peter Dutton has sunk to the lowest levels of hypocrisy in his attack on the ABF. He is making sure his chances of becoming Prime Minister are dead. All he has left to do is decide between burial or cremation."

"A deceased person could be cremated and then have their ashes buried," writes Ian. "While dead, cremated and buried makes more sense, it does not have such a good ring to it as Tony Abbott's phrase. Accusing an immigration minister of being weak might also be good for the media sound bites, but is not too clever for the message it sends overseas and to organised crime. Unfortunately Dutton sees it as necessary to deflect attention from allegations of immigration contracts awarded to businesses linked with organised crime under his watch."

Jennifer writes: "Dutton still has the mindset of a Queensland copper, with short-term tactical thinking and no capacity for thinking strategically about the broader impacts of his actions or the future consequences. He is so focused on stopping the current thing that bugs him, that he cannot see the implications of what he's doing including the broader effects on Australia. Either that, or he just doesn't care. I prefer to see it as pig-headedness than nastiness and lack of care for Australia's future. Either way, he's patently unsuited to be a PM."

"Nauru was once the world's richest country with its own airline and all citizens were individually rich and did not work at all," writes Garry J. "Then the phosphate ran out and now 95 per cent of Nauruans are out of work and couldn't work if they wanted to. The fake immigrant problem saved the island from bankruptcy. Australia is still bankrolling the country with the cost of the ongoing contracts. So now instead of three illegal migrants there we have 42 for our billion dollar annual payments. We could probably save that much money by relocating most of our politicians there on permanent detention."