For several days now, I’ve been deeply struck by a new radio advertisement. The radio blares here constantly; they turn it on so the prisoners can’t easily shout to one another. These are ordinary radio stations, except the ad breaks are filled with local inserts. In my case, it’s advertising from businesses in the Kovrov district, where the penal colony is located. And this is what it sounds like: “We accompany people on their final journey, from military personnel to civilians. Discounts for combat veterans and service members. In your hour of loss, call…” Can you imagine the scale of the losses in the war against Ukraine, how many coffins are being brought here, if even in Kovrov, a city of 134,000 people, there is such fierce competition for the booming funeral-services market that funeral homes have started advertising on the radio? And not just anywhere, but on Russian Radio, the country’s most popular station, where the ads are presumably the most expensive. So there you have it: the role of the individual in history. We were dragged into this nightmare by a single deranged old man, living in fantasies that he is a great military commander and extraordinarily popular in Ukraine. Of course, propagandists, officials, and all manner of hangers-on are now fiercely and ostentatiously speaking in favor of the war. But by now we know for certain that none of them was aware of the plans for the invasion and none of them believed a real war would actually happen. And for many of them, the war is a serious nuisance, damaging their hidden businesses and corruption schemes. The core decision-makers: Putin is 70, Patrushev is 71, Bortnikov is 71 — 212 years between the three of them. Fine, then not one old man living in fantasies, but three. That doesn’t change the essence of it. They imagined themselves Napoleons, and the ones paying the price are those being buried in discounted coffins.