The death of Navalny, 47, who was of Russian and Ukrainian descent, in the Siberian prison where he was serving a 20-year sentence, is another dark episode in the government of Vladimir Putin.

The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District claimed that Putin’s best known critic had “felt ill” after a walk, “almost immediately lost consciousness” and died soon after.

Mr Navalny organised major street protests against corruption and Putin in the past decade describing Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, as a “party of crooks and thieves.” He survived an attempted assassination in August 2020 after being poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent, the same substance used to attack the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in the UK in March 2018.

Navalny had more than six million YouTube subscribers. He was jailed in 2021 and his terms were twice increased following embezzlement, contempt of court, and extremism charges.

Part of that last sentence, which would have seen him incarcerated until 2038, involved his transfer to the “Polar Wolf” colony in the Arctic Circle which is considered to be one of the country’s toughest jails.

The treatment of Navalny is another indication of the vice-like grip that the Kremlin keeps on opposition figures. A presidential election in March, which is expected to see Putin returned for a fifth term, has already debarred a vocal critic of the war, Boris Nadezhdin, despite him gathering the 100,000 signatures required to get on the ballot.

A speaker at the American Embassy in a debate this week on Ukraine said that what we are witnessing is the unfinished business of the Second World War. After that global conflict one dictatorship was put on trial, while the other, run from the Kremlin, was rewarded by being given half of Europe.

Time will run out for Putin. But it is going to take longer than we might hope with consequential demands on our resilience and resources.

While Benjamin Netanyahu is subject to electoral pressures in a way that Vladimir Putin is not, he has a similar implacability.

While Netanyahu has rejected US suggestions about a Palestinian state saying that it would be a “huge reward” for Hamas, this discussion has to take place in the context of any ceasefire. The alternative is war without end.

After the Six Day War in 1967 in which Israel came close to defeat, a group of foreign politicians were invited to see conditions on the defeated Arab side.

A subsequent article in the London Times stated that “there is a great deal of talk about peace, but none about justice” adding that the circumstances in makeshift camps “vary only from the appalling to the impossible.” Like Russia’s attempts to recreate the USSR empire, the conditions of Israel and Palestine are also the unfinished business of 1945. It will bedevil us for years yet.

Art of leaving well enough alone

We have had cause to make mordant comments in the past about the problem with administrators in sport.

And the problem is that they just will not stop administrating.

Irish fans who have booked their tickets for what could be a Six Nations decider at Twickenham on March 9, a delicious curtainraiser to the following week’s Cheltenham festival, would do well to check the small print about where they are located at the self-styled ‘home of rugby’.

Because the power that be have decided that there should be trials of an ‘alcohol-free experience’ in certain parts of the ground, and have chosen to try out this wheeze, about which there was precious little advance publicity, for England’s two biggest home games of the international championship. Wales and Ireland. That will work then.

This is another example of bureaucrats not knowing when to leave well enough alone. Or, it might be argued, it is another incremental intervention by the health police into an area of traditional activity in which they believe they have a legitimate interest.

Information on the England Rugby website which became available at the end of January says alcohol-free measures will take in England’s soldout game against Ireland and identifies the affected seating areas: Lower tier L15 and L16 and upper tier U14 and U15. While some may welcome the opportunity to be spared the pleasure of handing over €9 for a pint of Guinness (the brewer is an official sponsor of the Irish and the English teams) the general feedback from the Welsh leg of this trial was negative.

Fans are demanding refunds after reports of chaotic scenes with drinkers chugging down several pints from cardboard holders after being told by stewards that they could not bring them in sight of the pitch in their part of the stadium.

The experiment was justified as a means of ensuring that the view of fans would not be impeded by a constant procession of supporters moving to and from bars and toilets. However, there was confusion during the game with stewards required to enforce the zero-alcohol rules.

Ireland’s captain in the win over Italy last weekend, Caelan Doris, suggested this week that having sections catering for students or young people where they may be “encouraged to have a few more pints as well” would aid the atmosphere in the Aviva Stadium.

While he is likely to receive opprobrium for the well-intentioned comments, he has at least contributed to a discussion on sections of grounds being alcohol-friendly zones in an open forum. Six Nations tickets start at just under €100 with the best costing over double that.

Twickenham stadium expects to sell over 160,000 pints each big match. And although this particular experiment covered 700 or so seats, everyone is familiar with that other characteristic of administrators. Mission creep.

If rugby runs the risk of that, it appears to have no problem in benefiting significantly from its profitable relationship with alcohol. And you might imagine that there are greater challenges on which it should be concentrating at present.