How the West can truly avenge Navalny’s death

With the Kremlin now claiming that it needs to hold on to the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny for another fortnight for ‘tests’, there is little doubt in the West that Vladimir Putin’s regime was either directly or indirectly to blame. Inevitably, the talk is now of punishing it.

Junior Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty told the Commons yesterday that the government was considering further measures beyond the immediate diplomatic prospects, and that ‘it would be premature…to comment on the prospect of future sanctions,’ but that he could confirm ‘that we are working at pace and looking at all options in that regard.’

It is quite right that there should be consequences. After all, the reason we do not know the details of Navalny’s end is because the Russian government is being characteristically untransparent and unreliable. It has been announced that the Investigative Committee (very roughly analogous to the FBI) is investigating, but as this was the same agency that built the trumped-up case used to send Navalny to prison, this is hardly a comfort.