Seven maps illustrating Putin’s distortion of history

By Oliver Jones News editor The Economist. Working on The Economist’s newsdesk means reacting to breaking stories quickly. But some events still have the ability to stop you in your tracks. The death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most significant opposition leader, reported by prison authorities on February 16th, was one such moment. In many ways, the news should not have been surprising. Mr Navalny was incarcerated in terrible conditions in a penal colony in Siberia. He had also almost died before, after he was poisoned by Russian agents using Novichok, a nerve agent, in 2020. And yet still it was a shock. In recent days much of the chatter about Mr Putin’s regime had been dominated by his softball interview with Tucker Carlson, when the president opined to the former Fox News presenter on arcane history and artificial intelligence. Watching the chat provided a reminder of how Mr Putin uses his distorted view of the past to justify his invasion of Ukraine (as our short history of Russia and Ukraine explains via seven maps). But it also showed that understanding Russia’s president—let alone interviewing him—requires an appreciation of his callousness and untrustworthiness. Mr Navalny recognised it all too well.