Speaker 1: From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. We're hoping you're having
Speaker 1: a great holiday break and today we're bringing you one
Speaker 1: of our favorite episodes from the year. This episode originally
Speaker 1: aired on February twenty, shortly after the death of Russian
Speaker 1: dissident and YouTube superstar Alexei Navalni. The Front will return
Speaker 1: with all new episodes on Monday, January thirteenth. Just hit
Speaker 1: follow or subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.
Speaker 1: The sun will set just after four thirty pm today
Speaker 1: on the treeless Arctic tundra of Siberia's Yamalo Nanette's region,
Speaker 1: and the temperature will plunge from minus eight degrees celsius
Speaker 1: to minus twelve. It'll be dark for sixteen hours before
Speaker 1: the sun limps over the horizon again. Today's forecast is
Speaker 1: for a howling wind to blast snow showers across the
Speaker 1: frozen plains. This is where the world's most famous political prisoner,
Speaker 1: Alexi Navali, has died in a Russian prison camp called
Speaker 1: Ik three. Polar Wolf. Nav One was forty seven. His
Speaker 1: body was ravaged by the effects of a nerve agent
Speaker 1: poisoning from a few years ago. He'd been asking to
Speaker 1: see a dentist for nearly two years. He had serious
Speaker 1: pain in his back and struggle to walk. He was
Speaker 1: serving a twenty eight year sentence on what were widely
Speaker 1: regarded in the West as trumped up charges of fraud
Speaker 1: and extremism. Just a day before his death, Navale seemed
Speaker 1: in good spirits at a court appearance via videolink from
Speaker 1: the Polar Wolf Camp. Prison camps, just like Polar Wolf,
Speaker 1: were the inspiration for two of the twentieth century's most
Speaker 1: evocative pieces of literature, books by Alexander Salzhanitsen, The Gulag
Speaker 1: Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Speaker 2: He didn't want the morning to come, but the morning came,
Speaker 2: as it always does.
Speaker 1: This is the nineteen seventies adaptation of Denisovich, written after
Speaker 1: Soljihnitsen's own years in prison after being convicted for criticizing
Speaker 1: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 2: Rumor had it that it was the Chinese who had
Speaker 2: given the authorities the idea of serving boiled grass instead
Speaker 2: of porridge. A bowl full of it weighed more than
Speaker 2: half a pound, but when you've eaten it, you are
Speaker 2: still hungry. The good thing about it was the detail
Speaker 2: had no taste hot or cold.
Speaker 3: Now, sad to say, prison camps have a long history
Speaker 3: in Russian culture, but it developed really to an industrial
Speaker 3: scale under communism.
Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign.
Speaker 3: Editor, and life in these camps is cruel, harsh and primitive.
Speaker 3: You don't get enough food, you don't get enough heating,
Speaker 3: especially the ones in the Arctic, and you're liable to
Speaker 3: be killed at any time by the guards. Now, Alexi
Speaker 3: Nevelni was unbelievably brave to go back there, and everyone
Speaker 3: predicted he would be killed in one of the camps,
Speaker 3: and that is what has happened.
Speaker 1: Late on Friday night, Australian Time, the news broke that
Speaker 1: Navalni was dead. Anthony Albanezi immediately blamed Vladimir Putin, as
Speaker 1: did other world leaders. Australia's ambassador to Moscow took the
Speaker 1: highly unusual step of laying flowers at a makeshift memorial,
Speaker 1: even as police were dragging away ordinary Russians in their
Speaker 1: hundreds who tried to pay similar tributes. Alexi Navanni was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen seventy six to a Russian mother and
Speaker 1: Ukrainian father. He became a lawyer and entered regional politics
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands as a Russian nationalist, but
Speaker 1: quickly the authorities began to see him as a threat.
Speaker 1: A series of protests, arrests, and prison time began. This
Speaker 1: turned Navalne into a campaigner for democratic reforms and against
Speaker 1: what he said was rampant corruption from the Kremlin down,
Speaker 1: with a wildly popular series of social media videos in
Speaker 1: which he bluntly accused Russia's power elite of criminality. He
Speaker 1: attempted to run for president in twenty eighteen, and that's
Speaker 1: where he came directly into conflict with Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 3: Vladimir Putin these days presents himself as a sort of
Speaker 3: a Russian Orthodox Christian defender of the West, but he
Speaker 3: was a KGUV colonel, and he really has wedded all
Speaker 3: the methods of communist repreat with over the top Russian
Speaker 3: nationalism and a patterner of completely fraudulent Russian Orthodox religious
Speaker 3: declarations as well.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, Navale was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent,
Speaker 1: an act he and his supporters directly attributed to Putin.
Speaker 1: Upon his return from treatment, in a German hospital. Navale
Speaker 1: released a documentary with drone footage of a glittering golden
Speaker 1: palace in southern Russia. Naviolei said the president had used
Speaker 1: money embezzled from ordinary Russians to build what he called
Speaker 1: Putin's Palace. Here's Navale in the video, speaking through a translator.
Speaker 4: I really want to understand how an ordinary Soviet officer
Speaker 4: turned into a mudman who's obsessed with money and luxury
Speaker 4: and literally ready to destroy the country and kill for
Speaker 4: the sake of his chests of gold.
Speaker 1: Here's Alexi Navoali speaking to the US sixty minutes on CBS.
Speaker 5: You know you used to be known as the man
Speaker 5: or had no fear, But what about your family? Do
Speaker 5: you ever think that you were putting them in danger?
Speaker 5: That is the toughest part. Yes, I don't feel any fear.
Speaker 5: But children, what is kind of really horrible thought. If
Speaker 5: they will try to use this navichok somewhere around my
Speaker 5: apartment where my children is coming, like you know, this
Speaker 5: door or something, but everyone can touch it. But anyway,
Speaker 5: we should fight these people because they will never stop.
Speaker 5: They will poison someone else, they will poison more people.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, former KGB agent and Russian
Speaker 1: defector Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London, where he'd been
Speaker 1: informing on Russian organized crime. He died in a British hospital,
Speaker 1: blaming Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 6: Alexander Livinenko's death from a cute radiation sickness was slow
Speaker 6: and agonizing, but unlike most murder victims, he was able
Speaker 6: to give extensive interviews to British detectives before he died.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, Russian double agent Sergei Scruppau and his
Speaker 1: daughter Julia were the targets of a botched assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: also in Britain. Navalni's death feels different.
Speaker 3: Now, Alexi Navelni. We ought to pay tribute to him.
Speaker 3: He must be the bravest man on the planet. He
Speaker 3: was the leader of the Russian opposition and he very
Speaker 3: much echoes the old dissidents in the Soviet Union. The
Speaker 3: poisoning was meant to kill him. He was nearly dead,
Speaker 3: but he recovered. But then when he was fit and
Speaker 3: well again, he went back to Russia to lead the opposition. Now,
Speaker 3: the Russian government put him in jail straight away, but
Speaker 3: I think they are a bit embarrassed about killing him immediately. However,
Speaker 3: his courriage is quite magnificent, and whenever he's appeared at
Speaker 3: court hearings and so on, he has retained his defiance
Speaker 3: of Putin and the authoritarian Russian system. He's occasionally smuggled
Speaker 3: out through his lawyers or relatives, statements to the Russian people,
Speaker 3: urging them on to keep going in their resistance, and
Speaker 3: most recently he smiled and gave positive gestures at his
Speaker 3: latest court appearance, and then he was killed the next day.
Speaker 1: The official story out of Russia was first that Navolni
Speaker 1: died of a blood clot and then the story changed
Speaker 1: to sudden death syndrome. His heart just stopped. His mother
Speaker 1: rushed to the camp but was unable to find his
Speaker 1: body in a local morgue. There are reports his body
Speaker 1: was covered in bruises that couldn't have been sustained through
Speaker 1: the hard manual labor Navalne endured at the camp. Next month,
Speaker 1: Russians will vote in a presidential election that Putin will
Speaker 1: almost certainly win exactly the way he planned it. So
Speaker 1: is Navalne's death a well timed message to any would
Speaker 1: be opponents.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a sense, nothing is a coincidence in Russia.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, you can overinterpret these things. There's
Speaker 3: a famous story of the State Department when the North
Speaker 3: Korean dictator Kim Il Sung died and the CIA directors
Speaker 3: question to the State Department boss was, now, why do
Speaker 3: you think he did that? It may have had more
Speaker 3: to do with the timing of what's going on in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, it's not an unreasonable speculation
Speaker 3: that he's sending out a message before the presidential election.
Speaker 3: He's saying to Russian citizens, don't you dare think that
Speaker 3: you can use the sham election that I'm about to
Speaker 3: hold as a pretext for engaging in any anti state protest.
Speaker 3: They want the power that they wield to cause people
Speaker 3: to be scared, above all their own citizens, but also
Speaker 3: international actors. The final reflection I'd offer Claire is that
Speaker 3: the terrible tragedy of this is that Russia is really
Speaker 3: one of the world's greatest and most magnificent civilizations, and
Speaker 3: there is a deeply sophisticated culture and a people who
Speaker 3: would be European and free, who are being constrained by
Speaker 3: the savage authoritarian power of Vladimir Putin, who is really
Speaker 3: a kind of a communist emperor, but he also has
Speaker 3: learnt the lessons of communist techniques of repression, and eventually
Speaker 3: he'll grow old and feeble and they'll be replaced. But
Speaker 3: there's no sign that the ruling system is under any
Speaker 3: serious real challenge within Russia.
Speaker 1: Coming up. If Vladimir Putin is wiping out his enemies
Speaker 1: one by one, does that mean he's feeling weak or
Speaker 1: feeling invincible? While have you, we'd love you to join
Speaker 1: our subscribers at the Australian dot com dot au, where
Speaker 1: we have the nation's best news, analysis and commentary. Twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. We'll be back with Greeg Sheridan after
Speaker 1: this break. In August, one of Vladimir Putin's former lieutenants
Speaker 1: was killed in a plane crashed north of Moscow. Yevgeny
Speaker 1: Progosian had launched a rebellion against Russia's military leadership exactly
Speaker 1: two months earlier, and the leader of Russia's Mercenary Group, A. Wagner,
Speaker 1: has insisted it was not a coup but rather a protest.
Speaker 1: Some analysts suggested Putin was weakening and had Progosion killed
Speaker 1: to warn other potential rebels conciously. There's similar commentary now
Speaker 1: after the death of Navali. Maybe this shows Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: is feeling threatened.
Speaker 3: I'm not really convinced by that analysis. I think he
Speaker 3: was embarrassed by the Pregosion rebellion, and very early on
Speaker 3: a lot of analysts, including me, said, well, look, either
Speaker 3: Progosion or Putin must die out of this. There's just
Speaker 3: no other logical outcome. You're not going to be allowed
Speaker 3: to stage that kind of rebellion and stay alive unless
Speaker 3: you win. Progosion would be killed. And then that's exactly
Speaker 3: what happened. And sadly, if Putin does fall, he's more
Speaker 3: likely to fall to a Progosion type figure than to
Speaker 3: Anvalni type figure, because control of the armed forces would
Speaker 3: be probably the decisive thing. But dictators in a sense
Speaker 3: are always brittle, even at their most powerful. So a
Speaker 3: dictator doesn't serenely rule for twenty or thirty years. He
Speaker 3: is always sleepless. He is always sleeping with one eye
Speaker 3: open and a revolver under his pillow. So the fact
Speaker 3: that he thinks Navalni was a threat to him is
Speaker 3: a magnificent tribute to Nevalnie's moral courage and standing and heroism.
Speaker 1: You can read all the nation's best news, sport, politics
Speaker 1: and business anytime at the Australian dot com dot au