The Kremlin does everything it can to claim Russian society is squarely behind Mr. Putin and his war but when one of the Kremlin's leading legal proponents turns on the President, we begin to see fault lines open up under the pressures of war and economic decline. Ilya Remeslo is not a household name in Ireland but the 42-year-old lawyer led a ferocious campaign against opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the behest of the President. Having initially supported Navalny, a man who came to embody the fight against Putin, Remeslo suddenly began accusing him of fraud. He testified for the prosecution in the 2022 show trial that saw Navalny sent to prison. As the world knows, this anti-Putin hero died suddenly two years later in a Siberian penal colony. Russia blamed "sudden death syndrome" but most people conclude he was poisoned.

Remeslo turned his attention to Ukraine and started blogging his support for the war, that is, until last week when his 90,000 followers on Telegram received a post entitled "Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin". It was quite a moment for such a vocal supporter, and risky too, of course. He accused Putin of waging a failing war in Ukraine and breaking Russia's economy, concluding that he was not a legitimate president. He said Putin must resign and be brought to trial as a war criminal and a thief. The concluding idea is that when people begin to view that the ship is sinking, they will look for the lifeboats.

On this subject, I wonder whether, with the current turn of events when the predominance of the media is concentrating on the Iranian crisis in the Middle East, we tend to push the business of Ukraine to the background. I would be delighted to have, after Easter, a comprehensive and informative debate on the situation in Ukraine with the Minister for foreign affairs.