For a long time now, every trip we take has followed the most romantic of formats: just you, me, and two or three FSB officers/cops trailing along behind us, imagining they’re gliding like invisible shadows. You go somewhere for lunch, and a car immediately pulls up across from the café. The driver, supposedly, walks away, while in the back seat behind the tinted windows sit two loafers “on operational duty.” And so on. Part of their important “state mission” is to keep photographing us and supplying the pictures to various propaganda outlets. Then those outlets put together reports about my luxurious lifestyle. And if you think a five-day trip to the settlement of Yantarny doesn’t exactly qualify as luxury living, that just means you lack imagination. The flight turns into “business class,” the price of the room gets multiplied by four, and Yantarny’s town park becomes “a private park surrounding an elegant Prussian mansion.” The locals laughed especially hard at that last one—it was from them that I learned about these wonderful stories. The same thing happens when I travel abroad, by the way. Apparently, that’s how they reward employees who’ve distinguished themselves: you get sent to follow Navalny in Thailand. But if you’ve messed up, then you get to trail after him along Yantarny beach at 7 a.m. in 14°C (57°F) weather.