On the radio today, I heard Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act of 2012*, talking about the death of Alexei Navalny. He pointed out that the sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine included freezing upwards of $350 billion in Russian assets held in Western banks like the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank. Browder suggests punishing the Navalny murder by confiscating those assets and turning them over to Ukraine in military aid. Everybody wins but Putin.

*You may recall, incidentally, that the Magnitsky Act was the subject of the (in)famous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, in which Russian agents allegedly offered dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for Trump’s pledge to relax the Magnitsky sanctions if elected. But that’s a whole different rabbit hole.