It's Monday,

Monday, February 19, 2024.

I'm Albert Moeller and this is the briefing,

a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Totalitarian regimes and dictators know how to deal with problems.

They disappear.

And when it comes to human beings, that often means they disappear by death, by murder, by assassination.

Joseph Stalin, perhaps the darkest of all of the dictators of the 20th century, put it this way, no man, no problem.

The disappearance of a man is not only the loss of a voice in history, it is often an attempt to shore up a totalitarian regime from any outside threat

and quite frankly to send the message that anyone else who might pose such a threat

is likely to meet the very same end. In this case, of course, we're talking

about Alexei Navalny who died Friday in a Russian penal colony in or near

Siberia. He died a day after appearing to be extremely healthy in a video appearance related to his legal situation.

He died after prison authority said he had taken a walk and then collapsed.

In any situation in which the main political

opponent of an autocrat at the head of a government at any point when such a

person should just disappear having been healthy all the sudden end up dead

that would raise a lot of eyebrows and it would raise huge questions but in this case

let's be honest we're talking about a documented continuing effort by the Russian regime to kill its most prominent political

opponent.

The story behind this is just massively important.

Alexei Navalny was a figure born in 1976. His father was a red army officer in the Soviet Union.

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