Putin may have been 're-elected', but Ukraine could yet topple him Timothy Garton Ash

Vladimir Putin has been "re-elected" president of Russia. In truth, Russian voters had no genuine choice last weekend, since Putin has killed his most formidable opponent, Alexei Navalny, and ordered the disqualification of any other candidate who presented even a small chance of genuine competition.

This plebiscitary legitimating procedure - familiar from the history of other dictatorships - was also implemented in some parts of eastern Ukraine, which Russian official sources describe as the New Territories. Large percentages for turnout were no more accurate than Putin's historical essays on Russo-Ukrainian relations.

Encouraged by signs of western weakness such as the refusal of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine and Pope Francis's recommendation for Ukraine to hoist the white flag, Russia's brutal dictator will continue to try to conquer more of Ukraine. Not only does Putin believe that Ukraine belongs historically to a Russia whose manifest destiny it is to be a great, imperial power. Unlike western governments, his regime is both politically and economically committed to continue this war, with as much as 40% of its budget devoted to military, intelligence, disinformation and internal security spending, and a war economy that can't easily be switched back to peacetime mode.

Yet these past few weeks have shown us that there's still an Other Russia, as there was an Other Germany even at the height of Adolf Hitler's power in the Third Reich. Tens of thousands of Russians of all ages and classes took the risk of subsequent reprisals in order to pay tribute to Navalny, producing that unforgettable image of his grave covered in a mountain of flowers. At his funeral, they chanted "Navalny! Navalny!", "Stop the war!" and "Ukrainians are good people!"