IS it me? Am I cursed in some way? Because Navalny is far from the first. There was Prigozhin last year and countless others. Why do they all keep dying? 

You would think, from the outside, this should be the happiest time of my life. A youthful 71, president of Russia, the special military operation in the Ukraine on the verge of liberating its grateful people. What in my life is less than perfect?

But this morning, once again, my mood is ruined by grave news. My friend and collegue Alexis Navalny, who I often light-heartedly jousted with in opposition, has sadly passed on.

This after I moved him to a much healthier prison where the cold air would help his condition. I did everything to safeguard his health, and still he succumbs to an illness doctors can only describe as ‘mysterious’.

Last year there was my great friend and former chef Yevgeny Prigozhin, taken far too young by an unexplained airplane accident of the kind that could happen to anyone.

And so many others over the years. Boris Beerzovsky, who hung himself unexpectedly. Mikhail Lesin, the founder of that great independent media outlet Russia Today, dead of a sudden heart attack. Pavel Antov, who fell from a window. Ravil Maganov, also window.

Why have so many good men been taken? Yes, perhaps we had fallings out, but that only makes things harder because I never got to make up with them before they died. You think that doesn’t hang heavy on my compassionate heart?

I owe it to these men, and to so many others, not to allow this to bring me down. I will carry on while all around me fall, unwavering in my course. But know this: I do it for them.