This Is What ‘Regime’ ‘Tyranny’ Looks Like

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s foremost domestic rival, Alexei Navalny, died in prison on Friday. Moscow’s explanation for his death is hideously comic in its vagueness. Navalny “felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness,” after which he promptly expired. Navalny had been sentenced to serve a 30-year sentence in Russia’s penal colonies after returning to his native country from exile in 2021. He endured multiple poisonings both before and after his arrest. In the interim, Russian authorities would periodically disappear the opposition figure, depriving him of access to his counsel for weeks on end. Still, Navalny appeared relatively healthy and in good spirits within days before his mysterious death. His loss is the worst blow to Putin’s opposition since another rival, Boris Nemtsov, was mysteriously shot to death within sight of the Kremlin in 2015.

If all this sounds to you like a story that might as well have occurred in Joe Biden’s America, then you have been tragically misled. Sadly, many of the American president’s domestic critics have adopted a bad habit of hyperbolizing their often-justified criticisms of Biden’s administration, festooning their arguments with lurid tales of the treachery of Joe Biden’s “regime.” Often implicitly, sometimes explicitly, these critics elide the distinctions between America’s lawful and legitimate executive and the one-man rule under which Russians suffer. Perhaps they’re deluded. Maybe they’re just cynical. Either way, they’re deeply misguided.