With Navalny off to prison, the West must do more than condemn Putin’s regime

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A kangaroo court just ordered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to a prison camp for 2½ years for supposedly violating his parole — while he was in a coma thanks to a Kremlin poisoning plot. Western leaders duly condemned the injustice — but it looks to be all talk.

After all, President Biden just extended the Moscow-favoring New Start arms-limit treaty for five years, while Germany continues to go ahead with a Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline that will give Putin greater leverage over border states like Ukraine.

Set aside this “internal matter,” as Putin’s minions call it: With his wars (proxy and otherwise), his Olympics cheating, his cyberattacks and meddling in other nations’ elections and his seizure of other countries’ territory, the Russian strongman has proven himself an enemy of civilized norms. It’s time to stop doing business with him, period, and start treating him as the pariah he should be.

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