Russia and the true nature of Russian power is fabulously hard to read. You can watch the Bentleys swish by and drink cocktails in the Metropol Hotel… - John Sweeney

God knows how many civilians have been massacred by the Russian Army in the port city by the Black Sea. There are stories of mobile crematoria vans turning corpses into ash; there are satellite photos of more and yet more mass graves. The chances that the people of Ukraine would agree to a negotiated peace, leaving some of their country permanently under Russian control, is zero or so close to zero as not worth bothering about. Zelenskiy isn't going to try. The war is not going Russia's way, once again, because the morale of the Russian Army is poor; their logistics are rotten from the head down; their leaders are bad in both senses of the word; bad evil and bad incompetent.

Full of flaws, unbelievably arrogant, a man who did flirt with the far right, but, over the course of the last ten years, the boy from Chernobyl stood up for the idea of another Russia, a country not defined by grotesque corruption, cruelty and a stupid war, but by honesty, courage and great good humour. That secures his place in history. When all hope was lost, and Russia turned, yet again, back to darkness, then along came a knight in dented armour, tilting at evil windmills.
Alexei Navalny was bold and good.
Alexei Navalny kept the red eye of Russia's soul alive and one day it will start blink-blink-blinking again as it stomps, like Terminator 2, towards the machinery of greed that controls the Kremlin.
Alexei Navalny is dead, but what he stood for will be back.

One Chechen view was: 'If we had wanted to bomb Moscow, we would have blown up the Kremlin or a nuclear power station. Why should we blow up a couple of blocks of flats?'