The Man Putin Couldn't Kill

Dictatorial strongmen like Valdimir Putin like to paint themselves as champions of law and order. Actually, their regimes are frequently charcterised more than anything else by general lawlessness. Putin has had opponents murdered even in Great Britain; last year, his goons tried to poison one Alexei Navalny, YouTuber turned poliitcian, in the Siberian city of Tomsk. It's a shocking story, and brave of Navalny to return to Russia, and predicatable imprisonment, even after the attempt on his life. Unusually for a Russian politician (and despite false accusations from Putin), he appears not to have a massive financial emprie of his own; but the film glosses over his past association with neo-Nazis a little too quickly for comfort. Nonetheless, it's hard to avoid concluding it would be good for Russia if he were to somehow replace Putin; but also hard to see that Putin would allow him to stay alive if he were seriously threatening to do so.