Russia’s president menaces his people and neighbours

ONE MAN commands a police state. The other is locked up and close to death. Nonetheless, Vladimir Putin fears his prisoner. Alexei Navalny may be physically weak: after most of a month on hunger strike, he was moved to a prison hospital on April 19th, perhaps for force-feeding. Yet he is still Russia’s most effective opposition leader. His jocular, matter-of-fact videos resonate with voters. One, a guided tour of a gaudy palace that Mr Putin denies owning, has been viewed more than 116m times. Mr Navalny has built a movement by mocking the Kremlin’s lies, and challenges Mr Putin’s party at elections. That is why he was poisoned last year, and then jailed on bogus charges. It is why his organisation has been branded “extremist” and is being ruthlessly shut down. It may also explain why Mr Putin, eager to change the subject and fire up patriotic Russian supporters, is once again menacing the neighbours.

In recent weeks he has massed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, a country he has already partly dismembered by grabbing Crimea and backing pro-Russian secessionists in the Donbas, an eastern region. Meanwhile, his navy has threatened to block the Kerch strait, cutting off parts of Ukraine from the Black Sea. On April 22nd, however, his defence minister announced that Russian forces would be pulled back again from the Ukrainian border, having completed their “exercises”. As The Economist went to press, it was uncertain how many troops would actually be withdrawn. In similar circumstances in the past, Russia has often left significant forces behind. Nor was it clear what point Mr Putin was trying to make with this colossal show of force. His goal may be to intimidate Ukraine’s leaders into making concessions, such as formal autonomy for the Donbas. Or he may be preparing for future aggression.