At the gates of Borisovskoye Cemetery in southeast Moscow, the two Russias of the future gathered on the second anniversary of the death of Alexei Navalny, the dissident whose name Vladimir Putin never uttered while he was alive. Carrying bouquets of flowers, dozens of young people queued to enter the grounds, determined to pay tribute to their political idol, despite the snowstorm and temperatures below -10°C. Standing by the entrance gate, half a dozen other very young people, their eyes uncovered, filmed and photographed all those attending the commemoration.

Although Donald Trump has often been the focus of international public attention lately, we cannot forget Russian President Vladimir Putin, a far more shadowy figure than his American counterpart, since he governs a country without the democratic checks and balances of the United States. Russian prisons are full of dissidents, and every day there are reports of the closure of NGOs or organizations that, for whatever reason, are inconvenient for the regime. And all this is without mentioning the thousands of Russians who die daily on the Ukrainian front simply because of the imperial delusions of the Kremlin's occupant.

Josep Borrell already knew he was treading on hostile territory when he decided to go to Moscow on Thursday as the EU's High Representative. The recent imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalni was added to the string of conflicts that mark the relationship between Russia and the EU. But Borrell decided to stick to the journey. And it has not turned out as he had hoped. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, used the press conference as a trap to score a victory in the geopolitical struggle, and not only in terms of vaccination against the coronavirus. Lavrov not only got Borrell to praise Russia's Sputnik vaccine, but he also stabbed the former Spanish minister in the back when he attacked him on one of his weak points. He reproached him for imprisoning political prisoners in Catalonia to defend himself against accusations of the poisoning and imprisonment of Navalni. And Borrell was undeterred.