For Russia’s liberals, these are unhappy times. A decade or so ago, it was possible to imagine a better, brighter future without Vladimir Putin. Street protests would drive him from power, maybe. And after a dark period of authoritarian rule, Alexei Navalny – or another opposition figure – would bring the country back to democracy and common sense, the hope went.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this dream has died. Putin has transformed Russia into what he always wanted it to be: a totalitarian state. The last vestiges of independent media have been closed. Critics have been jailed for tweeting against the war. Navalny languishes in a penal colony, criminal cases piling up around him, with zero prospect of release.
