Putin’s pact with the Russian population is fraying

Below is Lara Marlow's column in the weekend edition of The Irish Times.

It is a shocking story and what are we doing to stop a dictator? Mother Russia has lost over half a million soldiers since the beginning of Putin's 'Special Military Operation'. It is indeed a special operation.

Marlowe has to be admired for her great writing and for her courage too. It's part of Putin's stock in trade to see to it that his enemies disappear.

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Like all dictators, the Russian president is paranoid. The more he fears his own people and possible challengers, the greater the repression.

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Vladimir Putin long maintained a tacit understanding with the Russian people. They could enjoy stability and relative prosperity in exchange for loyalty and an absence of personal freedoms. In 2022 Putin added a promise to restore national pride through the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

In this fifth summer of the full-scale war, fighting has shifted from the eastern front to an air war that makes civilians on both sides vulnerable to sudden, violent death. Putin’s pact with his people is fraying. Forty per cent of the federal budget is spent on the war. Inflation is high and the economy is on the verge of recession. With a thousand Russian soldiers being killed or wounded daily and Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia, it has become impossible to ignore the war.

In the spring, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, expanded what he calls “long-range sanctions” – a drone and missile campaign that has targeted the Russian energy sector, military industry, transport and logistics.

A third of 34 large Russian oil refineries have been hit by Ukrainian drones, disabling 40 per cent of its production capacity according to Ukraine’s army chief, resulting in rationing and long queues for petrol. In retaliation Russia destroyed more than 200 Ukrainian petrol stations this summer.

Drones

Ukraine has targeted at least 15 facilities belonging to Wildberries, the online market that is like Amazon, DHL and eBay rolled into one and accounts for a significant portion of the Russian economy. Wildberries sells helmets, flak jackets and drone components, in addition to normal consumer items. Tens of millions of customers who enjoyed ordering online and receiving rapid deliveries have lost that convenience.

Ukraine produces up to 10 million drones annually. The sheer quantity enables it to send swarms of hundreds of drones at a time, ensuring that some get through. On July 6th, Ukrainian drones attacked the Omsk refinery in western Siberia, 2,800km from Kyiv, the deepest Ukrainian drone strike ever against Russia’s energy sector.

Western governments estimate half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine. Between 30,000 and 35,000 casualties are lost there monthly, more than twice the number of soldiers the Soviet Union admitted to losing during its 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.

Protest over the shocking number of military losses was long muted, because recruiters focused on prisoners and poor ethnic minorities from the Asian east of the country. But Russia is now losing more men than it can recruit, and there’s a strong rumour that Putin will draft up to 500,000 men after the September 18th-20th elections to the Duma.

Though both sides claim not to target civilians, the escalating air war is claiming more civilian lives. Russia has increased the proportion of extremely lethal ballistic missiles in its bombardments of Ukrainian cities.

Last month saw the highest civilian casualties in Ukraine since April 2022. Ukraine’s civilian victims outnumber Russians fivefold. The New York Times reports that 1,695 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the first seven months of this year, a 25 per cent increase on 2025. According to the Conflict Intelligence Team, cited by the New York Times, 327 Russian civilians were killed during the same period, more than double the 145 Russian civilians killed in the first seven months of 2025.

The carnage has renewed appeals from the self-described peace camp in the West for Ukraine to exercise restraint and make concessions to end the war. It’s the cold war era “don’t provoke the Russian bear” argument all over again.

Putin long allowed small parties in the Duma to oppose his United Russia party on insignificant issues to create an illusion of pluralism. That ended this week, when the Yabloko (Apple) party was banned from running in next month’s election, ensuring that no antiwar candidates can stand.

Internet shutdown

Real power in Russia lies with the siloviki or “strongmen” who, like Putin, rose up through the security services. Like all dictators, Putin is paranoid. The more he fears his own people and possible challengers, the greater the repression by the FSB. The intelligence service has taken control of the internet, the justice system and propaganda in schools.

In February Putin shut down Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp. Russians are allowed to use the Max digital platform, under FSB surveillance. Some Russians have one phone on Max and another with a VPN or virtual private network to enable them to circumvent the internet shutdown. Putin is trying to shut down VPNs.

Tension between the regime and the population manifests itself in small ways. Victoria Bonya, a Russian model and influencer with 13 million followers who lives in Monaco, began an 18-minute video complaint with the words, “Mr Putin, people are afraid of you”. The retired Olympic gold medal gymnast Margarita Mamun, who still lives in Russia, gave a daring television interview in which she declared, “I dream of freedom . . . I dream the war will end and people will stop dying.”

The Returnees, a documentary by journalists from Novaya Gazeta newspaper in which soldiers returning from Ukraine describe the war as hell on earth, has been viewed by 1.7 million Russians on independent viewing platforms.

Bloomberg reports tens of billions of dollars in capital flight from Russia this year. Russian oligarchs desperately want the war to end because it is depleting their fortunes. Putin, who has never sent an email and does not use a computer or mobile phone, has ignored pleas from business leaders who say they cannot function without the internet.

At the June economic forum in St Petersburg, Putin claimed, Trump-like, that the economy had never been better. He did not acknowledge black smoke overhead from a Ukrainian drone strike. A former news editor from Russian state television, now in exile, claims journalists prepare a special news broadcast for Putin nightly, shorn of anything that might anger or upset him.

Anyone claiming to know what goes on inside Putin’s brain is a charlatan, the Nobel laureate and founder of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, told Steve Rosenberg of the BBC. In speeches, Putin insists he will lead Russia to victory in Ukraine. “It cannot be a victory when two Slavic nations have ripped a million people to shreds,” says Muratov.

'Until you face your shadow it will destroy you'

The link below is well worth a listen.

Until you face your shadow it will destroy you - Carl Jung

Is he talking about what Christians call Original Sin?

https://youtu.be/VWvwzrPj3aY?si=crFEJTPJhw-5QDod

The inspirational life in word and deed of Dmitry Muratov

There are two links here; the first one is the Google biography of Dmitry Muratov, the one below it is BBC's Steve Rosenberg interview with Muratov.

Muratov is a journalist, newspaper editor and an opponent to Vladimir Putin and his dictatorial behaviour.

The bravery of this man is inspiring; I feel ashamed that I am doing nothing for Muratov, and all those other Russians who have sacrificed so much, many of them their lives, Alexei Navalny comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Muratov.

https://youtu.be/IngAT7qYxrI?si=Xaz66Xkc7da8EZqZ

Fall of Berlin Wall metaphor to realise everything is possible

On this day, August 13, 1961 the government of the German Democratic Republic constructed a wire fence/barrier/wall dividing Berlin in two; separating families, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and it was done with German thoroughness. Between that day and that famous day in 1989 when the wall came falling down, the GDR authorities built the world's greatest barrier between two States. 

The GDR State called it an antifaschistischer  Schutzwall, an anti-fascist protection barrier. They attempted to tell their people that the purpose of the Wall was to keep western capitalists out of their country, nothing was further from the truth. The lying and nasty behaviour of the government of the GDR gave East Germans the seed to be people with a great sense of humour.

The prestige car of the GDR was the Wartburg, which was called by the people 'The Martin Luther Wagen'.  When Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church he said: 'here I stand and can go no further'. The Wartburg had the reputation of regularly breaking down. It was built close to the Wartburg castle, where Luther translated the Bible. 

East Berlin was hermetically closed off from West Berlin. GDR authorities were delighted to see old-age pensioners exit the east and remain in West Berlin; it meant they were saved paying them pensions.

West Berlin was not technically part of the Federal Republic of Germany; it attracted large numbers of 'alternative'-style people, artists, writers, painters, probably the homosexual capital of Germany. 

There  was no military conscription in West Berlin, on the other hand there was an obscure law,  that a person could be shot on sight by military personnel of the four powers, England, US, France, Soviet Union.

I lived in Berlin before the wall came tumbling down; its collapse gave me the courage to appreciate that one must never say something can't be done, that is, provided it is not against the laws of gravity.

United Berlin is one of the world's great cities but old West Berlin had a special character; a great place to live. It was a different place and very different to any city in the Federal Republic. Indeed, East Berlin, the capital city of the GDR had its own charm.

Why run to Rome when they can talk to me directly?

This week's column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Those words from Oscar Wilde gave me some comfort in recent days. So often the man was on the button in how he could express the real and inner feelings of people. He was  never afraid to speak his mind. 

In response to my column here last week about how we communicate with one another a reader replied: ‘I liked your article which shows the quality of our ability to communicate. I’m certainly a concoction; how about the private me, the public me, and on and on, ad infinitum.’

What wise words. There are so many aspects and corners to all of us but at the end of the day we all need refuge somehow or somewhere to express the real me. Maybe I idealise marriage/partnership and think that’s where perfect communication happens. But of course that’s pie-in-the-sky imagining on my part.

The reason why I quoted Oscar Wilde at the beginning of this column is because I discovered a reader wrote to Rome about my missives. She/he feels I’m too critical of the church.

They have every right to complain, criticise, chastise me, I have absolutely no problem with that. But for heaven’s sake why would they not first contact me, write to me, write a comment on my blog, phone or talk to me face-to-face about the issue.

And this example is in so many ways the very point I mentioned in last week’s column.

Some years ago a priest of the Kerry diocese wrote a letter to this newspaper complaining about something I had written. It was not a nice letter, indeed, it was an edited version that appeared in print. He also wrote to my provincial. He knows me I know him; would the sensible and appropriate action not have been to have contacted me directly? Had we had a discussion over a cup of coffee it would have made far more sense, at least to my way of thinking. 

But it seems that’s not the way many in the Catholic Church behave. It’s cloak and dagger stuff. But of course it’s not exclusive to the church, that carryon goes on across the board. But I would imagine an organisation that preaches so much about truth, kindness and goodness would have higher standards. 

And that sort of behaviour is so far removed from the synodality that Pope Francis began and Pope Leo is intent on continuing.

Pope Leo in his encyclical Human Magnificence keeps stressing the importance of how we need to respect one another. If we are to respect each other then we have to speak to one another openly and honestly. 

And may I assure  you I can give you first-hand examples, of how poor the church is in behaving openly and honestly. I hope some day to be able to relate on these pages an example or two.

In the meantime it would be great to hear directly from readers, who wish to criticise what I write, rather than running to Rome. Honestly, I’de love to chat with them, and hopefully learn from them too.

No media news on power unit of burnt bus

A Dublin Bus double decker vehicle went on fire  in service in Donnybrook today. Fortunately, all passengers and driver were able to leave the bus uninjured.

On reporting the incident is seems no media outlet commented on whether the bus was a diesel, hybrid or all-electric vehicle.

It's an extremely rare event for a bus to go on fire with passengers in Dublin.

If it were either a hybrid or all-electric bus it would be of significant news. From pictures available it seems to be a vehicle with a diesel engine.

Over the last 12 months a number of all-electric buses, the EW series, have been spotted broken down on Dublin streets.

Do you tend to sit on the fence? It maybe an Irish thing

Interesting article by Joe Humphreys in The Irish Times yesterday.

William Desmond was a novice in the Irish Dominican Province; he began the noviciate in St Mary's Pope's Quay in September 1968 and left close to first profession in the summer of 1969.

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For philosopher William Desmond, being Irish is bound up with a ‘sense of doubleness’

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Do Irish people have a particular way of thinking? The question has engaged writers and anthropologists over the years. Our colonial history, our geographical location on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, and the centuries-long influence of the Catholic Church are typically cited as factors in shaping “The Irish Mind”.

William Desmond, one of Ireland’s most decorated philosophers, explores the issue afresh in his latest book. Wayward and Homebound: Irish Betweenings, Philosophical Thought, and Writing examines “family resemblances” in Irish intellectuals ranging from ninth-century monk John Scotus Eriugena to modernist novelist James Joyce.

Desmond belongs to that school of philosophy known as metaphysics. He investigates “what lies beyond physics” – stuff like “the meaning of life”. So – readers brace yourselves! – he is not in the business of giving pat answers to big questions.

His work is rich with sly observation, and among the many fascinating vignettes in his book is a meditation on Eriugena’s view of the sexes. The monk – famous for featuring on the Irish £5 note – has “an idea of the original human being as one whole prior to the fall which divides the original unity into male and female. Bisexuality is an outcome of the fall, a fall into division”. Now there’s an answer from the Middle Ages to contemporary gender wars. We are all different but the same.

On the nature of Irish thought, it cannot be reduced “to one defining property”, says Desmond. Rather, there are distinct ways in which Irish thinkers have navigated “being between” – between science and religion, between parochial and cosmopolitan, between home and exile. The latter is particularly resonant for Desmond as someone who was born in Ireland but spent most of his academic career in the United States and Belgium. “My sense of being Irish is bound up with this saturated sense of doubleness.”

The “interplay between sameness and difference” informs what he calls his “metaxological” philosophy – coming from the Greek “metaxu”, meaning “between”. Some might see this as a weakness, or as a very Irish form of sitting on the fence. But Desmond sees it as a positive.

Dualistic thinking divides problems into opposed and irreconcilable camps. He says “the Irish are not immune” from doing that. “But they are not without reserves of what dialectical thinking promises. Dualistic thinking is related to the understandable impulse to determine precisely the identity of this thing or that: to fix this or that as univocally as possible. Dialectic is a mode of thinking which tries to mediate between differences, not only in their opposition but also in their togetherness.”

Which mode of thinking has the upper hand in Ireland?

“I am old enough to remember when the catchword of judgment in politics and public life was ‘sinister left-wing elements’ rather than ‘far-right extremism’. To paraphrase Yeats about politics in his poem The Great Day: a beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot; the beggars change places but the lash goes on.

“There is not enough finesse for equivocity in public life, and paradoxically also not enough straight talking. There is also not enough listening to what comes up from below. There can come a curating of public communication that over time is trust-sapping,” Desmond says.

In the book, “I have tried to offer a kind of philosophical album of different faces in the family ... The challenge: not quite the game of ‘Spot the philosophical Paddy’.” Rather, he says, the aim is to identify “idioms of how we find ourselves in the midst of things, how we inhabit the middle space”.

Circle

It’s tempting to characterise the Irish mind by what it’s not. It’s non-imperialistic, non-colonial, militarily non-aligned, politically non-ideological – as illustrated by the absence of UK-style left-right politics – and so on. To this we might add, it’s not part of mainland Europe.

“We do not reflect often enough on how an island is double-edged: bounded with an inward face, and open with an outward space of passage beyond. A landlocked nation tends to engender a metaphysics different to islanders who know winds from the beyond, coming surprisingly off the surrounding seas,” says Desmond.

Not being one thing or the other has served us well in many respects. But let’s not flatter ourselves. A reluctance to pick sides may have more to do with moral cowardice than openmindedness. We may find Donald Trump repugnant, but we’re not going to say that to his face if he comes to the Irish Open in September.

But let’s not be too hard on ourselves either. Why not apply some dialectic thinking to the Irish propensity to apply dialectic thinking? A bias towards moral compromise – towards seeing the answer in grey rather than black or white – is good but also bad.

Desmond points out that a common motif in Irish art is the circle or sphere. It’s there in the curved stones of Newgrange, the Celtic crosses that populate our land, in sean-nós singing and in circular storytelling exemplified by Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Rationalist philosophers condemn circular arguments. But, says Desmond, “there are other senses of circularity that are not vicious. One might have a more meditative thinking that circles around a recurrent perplexity”.

In this spirit, we might say a distinguishing feature of the Irish mind is to be in two minds, although I could be wrong about that.

Sergei Lavrov says Vladimir Putin is a man marked by God

Mentioning God or God's name should always carry with it a certain seriousness or profundity. It's a name that is so easily abused. It is used in so many different forms and circumstances, it easily loses its importance or meaning.

And then there are those who genuinely believe they know everything about God, even what God is thinking: does God think?

The kings and queens who have committed great atrocities in the name of God, the churches that have abused God's name down the centuries.

As the German army slaughtered, raped and killed its victims the words 'God is with us' was embossed on the belt of every German soldier.

And then last week Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said in television interview that Vladimir Putin's ascent to power was a sign that his country was 'marked by God'.

Sergei Lavrov began his diplomatic service during the Soviet Union era, where it was State policy that there was nod God.

The current head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is a longtime supporter of President Putin.

Putin, Trump, Iranian leaders, all refer to God, as do so many other leaders, people and religions.

It sure is a funny old world.

An American pope at the border

Link below is well worth a read; it's from the Global Catholic.

https://www.globalcatholic.com/an-american-pope-at-the-border/

Is The Key to cease publication after next edition?

This blog has heard from a reliable source that the free-sheet, The Key, a publication of the Irish Dominican Friars is ceasing publication after its next edition.

This blog has learned the reason for this decision is due to lack of donations. The source said it depends completely on voluntary donations and that they have not been forthcoming.

The free-sheet is new, has published approximately two or three editions.

What sort of market research was done in the preparation and planning of the free-sheet? How much has the endeavour cost?

The publication was dense, bad layout, turgid material and most articles certainly not appealing to the majority of the population.

Was there a target audience in mind?

Who was editor of The Key, was there an editorial board, if so why were the names never published? Was there an editorial policy? Was a publishing company asked for advice?

In what way was it a Dominican project?

St Dominic, whose feast day it is today, insisted on attempting to meet people where they were with their lives and faith. Synodality is all about a two-way listening; and that means being with people in their struggle.

There was never any sense of that with The Key. It gave the impression of being dogma heavy but even in that respect it didn't work.

And it's such a pity as there is great potential to produce top quality material, which could tell the story of the Gospel in an attractive and interesting manner; told in a way easily understandable to most of us.

Dr Kate Bowler's criticism of the American Prosperity Gospel

BBC Radio 4's Sideways programme on Wednesday morning featured an interview with Dr Kate Bowler.

She is a Canadian academic and writer who works at Duke Divinity School.

On the programme she spoke about the history of the America Prosperity Gospel. She referred to her own cancer diagnosis and how people responded and related to her during her illness.

If you have the chance or the possibility of listening back to the programme it's well worth a listen.

BBC no longer makes BBC Sounds available to people outside the UK

But Bowler also is the host of the podcast Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, a product of Lemonada media.

She debunks so much of the words and attitudes we have towards people who are ill. 

Kate Bowler has much to teach us.

Pope Leo talking to prisoners in Barcelona

When Pope Leo was in Spain earlier this year he visited a prison in Barcelona.

Below are some extracts from what he said when speaking with the inmates.

“Let us make room for the Lord in our hearts and seek his face,” he said. “Let us allow his love to guide us. Let us cling to him, who continually invites us to hope and shows us a wonderful horizon that no physical barrier can prevent us from reaching.”

God, he added, “continues to speak to us in the depths of our consciences, helping us discover that he dwells among us. He is only waiting for us to give him a chance.”

Pope Leo concluded his address by encouraging the inmates to “keep dreaming God’s dream” and that while God loves them as they are, “he dreams of you being even better.”

“The Lord allows us all to start anew, for being human and being Christian does not mean never making mistakes, but rather growing in the ability to convert, repent, make amends and, above all, to reconcile and forgive,” the pope said. 

He added: "Even if anxiety and sadness mark certain moments of your journey, remember that life’s mistakes do not define a person’s identity,” 

Never underestimate the power of every word we say

This week's column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

On Thursday a young woman with two children passed me on the street; I imagine the children were both under five. Their mother was engaged in chit chat with them. As I passed them I said to myself, there she is talking baby talk to her children but nevertheless, real words. 

Two days later a family of six were descending on a lifelong friend of mine; his daughter, her husband and their four children were coming to Kerry to spend a few days with him. He had bought a tent for the children and the plan was they would construct it and then sleep in it for two nights. The children range in age from eight to 15. 

The making of the tent was great fun, laughing and joking and maybe even a little bit of crying too. But they got the job done. Slept in it the first night but the second night the younger two abandoned ship as it was too cold. 

Little eight-year-old Rory wanted to know why they did not have heating in it. It was all great fun and of course a lot of child talk went on between adults and children. It’s part of nature, indeed, part of the fun of nature.

The previous Sunday I was at lunch with a small group of people. All of them had been to Mass earlier that day. They are not priests but are chaplains. I forget how, but for sometime we spoke about our faith, what it meant to believe in God. At one stage someone asked the question how was Christ present in the Eucharist. Surely Christ is not present in the Eucharist the way we were sitting at the table. During that discussion someone referred to the Eucharist as Holy Bread.

It was interesting what we all had to say; someone asked about how we interpret the readings at Mass. 

The discussion wandered off to talk about organised religion versus spirituality. It was interesting how we all had differing views and opinions. I came away from the discussion impressed, asking myself many questions. 

Between the mother talking to her children, the tent builders, and my lunchtime chat I was struck how important it is to make ourselves understandable to one another; to be real with each other.

It has often struck me in the company of priests how seldom it is we talk openly and honestly with each other; a lot of game playing goes on. Far too often we are slow to speak our minds; so much shadow boxing takes place. What priest ever speaks his mind to his bishop or provincial?

We are experts on clerical gossip, but I have seldom if ever heard a conversation on the Eucharist or what it means to say there are three persons in the one God. I often wonder what actually do we share with each other.

A friend has pointed out to me that’s the way of the world; it’s not only priests who do not speak their minds. True, but I think priests have it down to a fine art form. 

On the other hand I am blessed to have some close priest friends with whom I can speak my mind.

Best policy to deal with Donald Trump is to ignore him

Last March two weeks into the Iran war US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that US attacks had “destroyed” Iran’s military and air defences, making it incapable of engaging in combat.

"Never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective," Hegseth said during a press briefing with reporters. 

What's the man saying today? Did no one have the courage to tell this silly person that he was talking nonsense? And then the swagger of him.

It has been announced that President Trump will be visiting Ireland in September.

Yes, the Irish President and Taoiseach are obliged to meet him but what about simply ignoring his visit; no demonstrations, minimum media coverage. No fuss at all.

'No prison can separate a person from God's love'

This is well worth a read.

Pope to Cardinal Simoni: No prison can separate a person from God's love - Vatican News:

https://share.google/yWvzzqotfurutg5H0

Worrying words spoken today at Auschwitz Birkenau

Today is European Holocaust Day, honouring the memory of the thousands of Roma and Sinti women, men, and children who were persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust.

On the night of August 2 to August 3, 1944, the remaining, approximately 4,000 Sinti and Roma prisoners, mostly women, children, and elderly people, were murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz Birkenau.

An elderly man, whose family was wiped out at Auschwitz Birkenau, spoke today on the site of the slaughter, the fears and worries he has of the current trend to the far right and how people in minorities are worried and anxious about their future.

Maria Alyokhina's warning: Europe faces military collapse

Lara Marlowe's column in The Irish Times on Friday.

This blog has been a supporter of the rock group Pussy Riots since 2013.

Maria Alyokhina is a powerful woman and deserves great support. Remember when President Putin and Patriarch Kirill  called the group's behaviour in the Moscow church sacrilegious?

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When I met Maria “Masha” Alyokhina at the Borris festival earlier this summer, the Russian dissident and founding member of the feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot wore a Ukrainian T-shirt showing the Kremlin in flames.

If she could, Alyokhina (38) really would burn down the Kremlin. “If I had a missile and I could fire it at Putin, I would do that,” she says, laughing.

In February 2012, in the run-up to Vladimir Putin’s third presidential election (of five so far), Pussy Riot filmed a performance art clip inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Wearing fluorescent balaclavas, they screamed lines that included “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out.”

For this they spent 22 months in Russian penal colonies. “The prison system is a legacy of the Soviet labour camps,” Alyokhina tells me over a video call this week. She speaks in the telegraphic style she used to write two memoirs, Riot Days and Political Girl.

“People live in barracks, 100 people in each room. We sewed police and army uniforms. No medicine. No human rights. No complaints allowed. I spent four months in solitary confinement because I asked questions.”

It is night-time and Alyokhina is somewhere in Montenegro, pacing around a shadowy apartment. She chain-smokes, has an impish smile and laces her conversation with laughter and expletives. A dog howls outside.

Alyokhina remembers March 8th, international women’s day, in 2012. Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny came to Nizhny Novgorod, where she and two other members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned. “It was our first week. They came to the jail to support us with words, statements and placards. They were famous opposition leaders, and we were just the girls from the church. It was super important to me.”

Nemtsov was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015. Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020 and died in a penal colony inside the Arctic Circle in February 2024. “Yes, I was upset,” Alyokhina admits. “You can understand stuff in your head, but when it happens it’s an emotional shock.”

Assaults

Alyokhina and her fellow Pussy Riots – she uses the name as a descriptor for individual members – encountered Putin’s goons, known as gopniks or titushky, many times. She says Putin followed the example of his Ukrainian protege Viktor Yanukovych in employing young, often drunken men to beat up protesters. At the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games the Pussy Riots were attacked by Cossacks with horsewhips. The following month, they were assaulted in a McDonald’s restaurant by young men who squirted zelenka or green ethyl alcohol into their eyes to blind them.

Alyokhina would be arrested a half dozen more times, but she never stopped protesting. In April 2022 she fled Russia, making her way to Iceland, where she was given a passport. Last September, a Moscow court sentenced five Pussy Riot members in absentia to prison terms of eight to 13 years. Alyokhina received the heaviest sentence: 13 years and 15 days.

Russian opinion polls indicate that more than two-thirds of Russians still support Putin. Alyokhina does not believe it. “If you say you don’t support Putin, you go to prison for eight years,” she says. “How can you trust polls or statistics in a totalitarian country where there is military censorship, where you can be imprisoned for saying there is a war? There were and are millions of Russians who wanted to be part of Europe. Nobody wanted to be citizens of this barbarian, terrorist, crazy state.”

Fearlessness is Alyokhina’s most impressive trait. “I am not afraid of you,” she told judges at her 2012 trial. “I am not afraid of lies and fiction, of the thinly disguised fraud in the sentence of this so-called court ... Nobody can take away my inner freedom.”

Alyokhina says protest must be “desperate, sudden and joyous”. She has testified on Capitol Hill, shared a stage with Madonna and appeared in an episode of the Netflix series House of Cards.

When she was a teenager, Alyokhina left home to live with hippies and punks in Moscow. “I want to live interestingly. To change the world. How, exactly is unclear,” she writes in Political Girl. Twenty years later, she still has no fixed abode. But she is no longer a hippie. “I am calling for guns and weapons for Ukraine, so you can’t say I’m a hippie,” she laughs.

Alyokhina travels often to Ukraine. Pussy Riot raised €200,000 for Okhmatdyt, the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine, after a Russian missile strike in July 2024 destroyed 60 per cent of it.

My Ukrainian friends are very distrustful of Russians, even those who have sided with Ukraine. “I met many Ukrainians and nobody judged me,” Alyokhina says. “Everyone said ‘thank you’ and it was heartbreaking.”

Alumina exports

The Irish Government wants to believe the fiction that alumina, which is used to manufacture drones, missiles and fuselages of warplanes, is not a fungible resource; that if alumina exported from Aughinish is used to wrap chocolate, there will be less metal for weapons production.

“Ireland is not the only EU country that maintains connections with Russian oligarchs,” Alyokhina says. “Most European countries continue to do business with Putin’s Russia.” The Financial Times reported on July 19th that Greece, France, Italy, Germany, Austria and Portugal all demanded exceptions for their businesses in the EU’s most recent, 21st package of sanctions against Russia.

Alyokhina does not believe Donald Trump will protect Europe and says that Europe is in a state of virtual military collapse: “Why is it only right-wing politicians talk about it? What the hell? Like leftwing people don’t understand that this war is going on? Or they will give several more regions of Ukraine to Russia and for the next two years, maybe they will live in peace? And then what?

“Europe should be prepared. Even if it’s not possible to make a united Europe, each country should understand what is going on. Now only the Baltic countries are aware and preparing.”