It's nice to see some directness for a change, in politics and the media:

President Biden said that there was "no doubt" that President Vladimir V. Putin's government was behind the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken dissident who Russian authorities said had died at a remote Arctic prison on Friday.

"Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. Putin is responsible," Mr. Biden said at a White House news conference. "What has happened to Navalny is even more proof of Putin's brutality. No one should be fooled."

Anne Applebaum, Why Russia Killed Navalny:

Navalny is now presumed dead. The Russian prison system has said he collapsed after months of ill health. Perhaps he was murdered more directly, but the details don't matter: The Russian state killed him. Putin killed him-because of his political success, because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent for breaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well.

Masha Gessen on Navalny in the New Yorker.

Good shines through the darkness