Faint cracks emerge in the facade of Putin's rule

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is fond of a phrase, "the wonderful Russia of the future," his shorthand for a country without President Vladimir Putin. But in the year that has passed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has gone back to a dark, repressive past. Over the last 12 months, Putin's government has crushed the remnants of Russia's civil society and presided over his country's first military mobilization since World War II. Political opponents such as Navalny are in prison or out of the country. And Putin has made it clear that he seeks to reassert Russia as…