The new Russian cult of war
It has been growing unnoticed for some time
ON MARCH 22ND, in a penal colony 1,000km north-east of the front lines around Kyiv, Alexei Navalny, the jailed leader of Russia’s opposition, was sentenced to another nine years imprisonment. To serve them he will probably be moved from Vladimir, where he has been kept for more than a year, to a yet harsher maximum-security jail elsewhere.
The crime for which he was sentenced is fraud. His true crime is one of common enterprise with that for which the people of Ukraine are now suffering collective punishment. The Ukrainians want to embrace many, if not all, the values held dear by other European nations. Mr Navalny wants the same for Russia. Vladimir Putin cannot countenance either desire. As Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, told The Economist, “If Russia wins, there will be no Ukraine; if Ukraine wins, there will be a new Russia.” That new Russia is as much a target of Mr Putin’s war as Ukraine is. Its potential must be crushed as surely as Mr Navalny’s.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "The cult of war"
From the March 24th 2022 edition
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