MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN

When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.

- WILLIAM LANGLEY

Alexei Navalny's last words to his wife came in a social media post on Valentine's Day: "Babe, we have love like in a song; cities between us, airport runway lights, blue blizzards and thousands of kilometres. But I feel you are near me every second, and I love you more and more."

Two days later, Alexei, the figurehead of opposition to Russian president Vladimir Putin, was dead. He was 47 and serving a 19-year sentence for "extremism" in a remote Arctic penal colony known as Polar Wolf.

In his long - ultimately fatal - fight against the Putin regime, Alexei had tried as best he could to protect his wife Yulia Navalnaya and their two children from the brutal paybacks of the state. While he campaigned she remained mostly on the sidelines, the pair often forcibly separated by jail terms and spells of exile. Not any more.

Days after Alexei's death, 47-year-old Yulia, her face etched grey with grief and anger, took to Alexei's internet channel to tell his millions of supporters around the world, "Putin has killed my husband. With him, Putin wanted to kill our hopes, our freedom, our futures. But I will continue the fight. I will continue my husband's work. I am not afraid."

The Navalnys came as a formidable package. Alexei frequently spoke of how important his wife was in his fight for democracy in Russia and liked to joke that Yulia's views were "even more dangerous than my own".

Yet the real strength of their relationship was the intense love story that underpinned it - one so rich in passion, tragedy and resolve, it could have come from Leo Tolstoy.