RIP Alexei

Abandon Hope, All ye who enter here

There’s a lot to write about that concerns the day job – the housing market, the push to net zero, the forthcoming Budget and General Election. But, in the face of global politics, that all seems a bit pointless.

The line above, taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy, where it was found inscribed upon the wrought iron gates of hell, is probably overkill. It’s me being melodramatic. But really, just sometimes it seems apt.

The situation in Gaza drags on and the bodies pile up – bodies of the innocent and the guilty, and those who are just in Gaza t offer humanitarian aid. The Ukrainian war is entering its third year, and the waste of life, resources, weapons and, yes, money, that it has caused looks never-ending. And Navalny is gone.

I can’t be the only one whose stomach lurched in horror at this awful, long-feared about news? Those of us who followed the Russian opposition leader on Twitter have been concerned for the past few weeks that he had gone worryingly quiet.

A political prisoner, incarcerated in an Arctic jail, a survivor of a Putin-sanctioned Novichok poising, Navalny himself knew he was on borrowed time. Now, if rumours prove true, a KGB Kiss (a blow to the heart from a well-positioned fist) has called time. It doesn’t matter that Putin wasn’t the one to strike the blow – at 5ft 7in to Navalny’s 6ft 3 he’d have need a stool – he is responsible. Navalny is gone by Putin’s wish, and, probably, his actual orders. I won’t repeat the tweet I sent when I heard, but the gist of it is that if he doesn’t have an end that is agonising and slow and painful, I will be disappointed.

My heart goes out to the incredibly strong Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei’s widow, who has vowed to keep up his work, and to his parents, Anatoly and Lyudmila, who are being denied access to their son’s body.

We in the West have to remember that we fed the beast, we were blinded by the light bouncing off the piles of roubles being spent in our economies. Our own government is as guilty of this as any.

By the way, to those who reached out last time I posted a miserable sounding blog, (You know who you are, and I love you for it), I am fine. It’s just that it’s February, the weather is miserable, the market’s in the doldrums, the world is looking way too comfy in its hell-bound handcart and Spring feels long way off.

If you get the chance to watch the Oscar and BAFTA-winning documentary Navalny, then I urge you to, though it will take on extra poignance now. Enough of this misery. There is hope. There is always hope. And no one says that better than the man himself.

Rest well Alexei