Assuming that the persecuted Australian publisher Julian Assange is taken into US custody following the UK's probable failure to provide any kind of justice for him, Russia should offer Alexei Navalny in a prisoner swap.
This in no way is intended to lend credence to the idea that either man is an international spy, as figures from both the Russian and American governments have claimed, but to acknowledge that each man is the other's parallel. Who is the good, the bad, and perhaps the ugly would depend on which of the two nations should refuse such a swap.
Navalny the politician, Assange the publisher
It should be quite telling that Russia's most famous dissident is a partisan politician, whereas the West's most famous dissident is a nonpartisan publisher. Navalny is sometimes falsely presented as a whistle-blower, yet what he does is make partisan propaganda films boosted by foreign media with an interest in regime-change in Russia. Assange, in contrast, never presented any message or agenda, and simply published raw data that exposed government officials in the act. Assange is everything Navalny pretends to be.
Navalny really seems to be the kind of traitor the US government accuses Assange of being. He roots for NATO forces amassing on Russia's frontier, and supports Western sanctions against his own country's defence and industrial sectors. From this, Russians can know Navalny is a Guaido.
It should be suspected that, were a hypothetical swap offered, Russia would almost certainly want to get rid of Navalny but the Americans would never let go of Assange. This should tell us something.
The test of the miserable little worm
Assange was instrumental in exposing the truth about America being a regime of murderers in raw, unedited video, and is effective at continuing to expose America's regime no matter where he is, whereas Navalny was always just America's favourite candidate to rule Russia. As such, a Julian Assange in Moscow would likely be very useful to the Russians, but an Alexei Navalny in Washington is probably useless to the Americans.
Assange is an undisputed icon of truth and selfless, virtuous journalism, invaluable to all the world's nations. Navalny is the dishonourable propagandist whose goal is power, not revealing facts to the public. He is, to quote a certain former UK Member of Parliament, a miserable little worm.
The profound inferiority of the West's championed dissident, this failed politician, in contrast to a journalist who exposed their regimes, would be undisputed in the event of inevitable US refusal to take the rotten Navanly in exchange for Assange.
If Assange dies, might Navalny then die?
It is likely that an entirely innocent and humble Julian Assange will die in the cruel custody of the American despots who hide behind the democratic pantomime, and who could not tolerate the humiliation at the exposure of their regime's crimes. In such an event, the Russians could similarly eliminate Navalny in turn, and this would be no loss as far as the world or even the United States is concerned.
A swap offer would give the Americans a difficult choice: either expose the worm they support in Russia, by showing their refusal to take him, or send Assange to Russia and risk a resurgent WikiLeaks. A successful swap would be a coup for Russia's reputation, and a failed swap would be equally incriminating for the US and make the US hesitant to harm Assange.
The Americans have a disgusting regime, whose leaders turned as red as gammon when their war crimes were exposed, and the world's focus should stay on them rather than Russia.