By common consent Ceausescu went mad during his and Elena's trip to China and North Korea in 1971. He went out an unstable paranoiac; he came back a … - John Sweeney

In Russia, Putin's enemies are not allowed to have a private life. We know all about what they do in the bedroom. But no one knows simple facts about Vladimir Putin. How many kids has he got? With whom? And are they by any chance extraordinarily rich?

What few people in the West properly understood then, and still don't, to this day, is the extreme nervousness in the West Wing of the Biden White House that a Ukrainian victory in the war could lead to Russia becoming Iraq 2.0. Their number one neurosis is that a Ukrainian victory would lead to the fall of Putin and that, in turn, would end up with the breaking up of Russia liberating two dragons the Americans are very afraid of. The first dragon is an Islamist Chechnya getting hold of a nuke and holding the Western world to ransom while Donald Trump is on the stump. The second, more terrifying, dragon is of China seizing Siberia while Russia is in chaos. Overnight, China would become the biggest, most resource-rich country on earth. [...] The negative to promoting timidity as your number one strategy is that the other players in the game will notice and react aggressively, making the possibility of the things you fear the most coming true more likely than not. And there are three specific weaknesses: one, real Russian victory in Ukraine is a worst outcome than future possible Russian chaos; two, the break-up of the Russian Empire established by Peter the Great and Catherine is long overdue and trying to wallpaper over the Tsarist, Soviet and now Putinist cracks won't work; three, rewarding evil never ends well.

One simple yardstick of someone's life, of the good or bad they have done, is how many people turn up for their funeral. In Navalny's case, there was an extra dimension knowing that the likely consequences of turning up to say a last goodbye could include getting sacked, arrested, a clubbing by the police or worse.