India, Aug. 23 -- His actual crime, as anyone paying attention knows, was the simple, stubborn refusal to stop saying that the war in Ukraine is a catastrophe.

Joseph Stalin would be delighted with Vladimir Putin, although the Soviet dictator would have executed 63-year-old Lev Shlosberg rather than sentencing him to a mere 11 years in jail for such a heinous crime. After all, Shlosberg had criticised Putin, and if you criticised the leader in Stalin's time, your life span would suddenly become extremely short. Records show that more than 700,000 people were executed during Stalin's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938, as he sought to consolidate absolute political control, fuelled by deep paranoia and fear of internal betrayal. Vladimir Putin...