The sticky truth about Navalny

His courage is exhilarating. Even if you think his cause hopeless, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Putin-baiter, deserves our admiration. To return to Moscow after being poisoned, surely knowing arrest awaited him, is beyond brave. The chances are he will be crushed. But annihilation is not certain; and if one day he wins his battle with Putin, his return to Moscow this winter will become the stuff of legend. Navalny is not crazy: he has made a rational calculation, weighing the relative safety of a tedious future in grey and indefinite exile against a small possibility of making Russian history. With open eyes he has chosen risk.

That sooner or later Vladimir Putin will be swept away is likely — but when? Might it be sooner? I hear those many media commentators who, after rehearsing with approval the story of Navalny’s return, go on to caution that he hasn’t a chance, and that all the cards are stacked in favour of Putin’s continuing and uninterrupted hegemony.