“Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.” So declared Joseph Stalin, the murderous tyrant whose own death arrived on March 5, 1953, five months after the birth of Vladimir Putin. Stalin’s death solved a great problem for his vast nation’s countless suffering citizens. His ultimate successor, Nikita Khrushchev, would denounce old “Uncle Joe” (as Franklin D. Roosevelt called him) in his crucial February 1956 “Crimes of Stalin” speech.

Speaking of crimes, it’s difficult to find a worst criminal in today’s Russia than Vladimir Putin. Putin clearly subscribes to Stalin’s death recipe. Back in July, he had his old friend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader who led a rebellion against him, blown out of the sky with a conveniently timed airplane explosion. Two weeks ago, he had his main political rival, Alexei Navalny, eliminated in a Siberian gulag.

Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.

One person who doesn’t feel so glib about death is Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei’s widow and the mother of his two children.

Last week, both Yulia and Alexei’s own mother received reports that their loved one’s corpse showed significant “signs of bruising,” even as Kremlin officials told them that he had died of something called “sudden death syndrome.” They insisted that Alexei’s body cannot be sent home until an “official investigation” is completed, one of an unknown duration.

How Stalin-esque. How Putin-esque.

Yulia is, of course, outraged. She accuses Putin of being downright “demonic” in his mistreatment of her husband. Choice words indeed. Her words ought to be a wake-up call to the weird American Putinists who find reasons to defend and sometimes even praise the despot. Among their reasons, they see Putin as a faithful Russian traditionalist and Christian. (For the record, Stalin had once attended seminary.)

From Yulia’s vantage, however, she discerns quite the opposite. “We already knew that Putin’s faith was fake, but now we see it more clearly than ever before,” said Yulia. “No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with Alexei’s body.”

That and then some. Putin is refusing Navalny anything but a decent burial. He wants no one to see that corpse. 

“Give us back the body of my husband,” Yulia pleads the dictator in a videotaped message on YouTube. “We want to hold a funeral service and bury him in a humane way, in the ground, as is customary in Orthodox Christianity.”

In an interesting juxtaposition, Yulia notes that her husband actually was a devout Christian whose faith inspired his views and his courage. He not only went to church, but in the gulag, he was actually fasting during the Lenten season. Yes, even while in prison.

Alexei Navalny made sacrifices. Putin, in turn, sacrificed Alexei. 

But more to the point, Alexei Navalny’s elimination helps Mad Dog Putin solve another problem, namely, that Navalny no longer exists to challenge Vlad’s next presidential election this coming March.

And that election is the next key episode to watch closely in the deadly authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin, which has taken the following winding road.

On Dec. 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected president ever in the country’s long history, announced that he was resigning the presidency, which at that point in his two terms had only several months remaining. Yeltsin was worn out. He turned over the reins to his prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

Putin then duly stood for election in March 2000. He won easily and fairly. Four years later, he won handily again and, at that point, was a popular president. Putin liked the job so much that he found a way after March 2008 to exceed the two four-year term limits on the president. First, he became prime minister to his handpicked puppet presidential successor, Dimitri Medvedev, the one to whom President Barack Obama pledged his “flexibility” after the November 2012 election — that is, the flexibility to backstab our NATO allies Poland and Czechoslovakia on joint missile defense. “Very good,” replied a pleased Medvedev in an open-mic moment to Obama. “I tell Vladimir.”

Soon enough, Putin schemed a way to return himself to the presidency and ensconce himself as dictator. Furthermore, in 2020 and 2021, through a referendum and a new Russian law, he created a way to allow himself to run for two more presidential terms — this time, six-year terms — potentially extending his rule into 2030 and even up to 2036.

News alert to Putin’s strange American defenders on the right: According to the original Russian democratic constitution, which the post-communist nation had fought so hard to secure, former KGB Lt. Col. Vladimir Putin’s reign should have ended in 2008. It’s now up to 2024 and will continue as long as the now-71-year-old desires to stay in power.

The next two elections (read: rubber-stamp coronations) for Putin will occur in 2024 and 2030. The first will take place this March from the 15th to the 17th. That’s only two weeks away.

And you can bet a billion rubles that Vladimir Putin will win. To quote another line from Stalin, it isn’t the votes that count, but he “who will count the votes.”

When Alexei Navalny was alive, Putin had a viable, popular competitor, even as Navalny had no chance in a rigged game. But now with Navalny altogether eliminated, Putin will run virtually uncontested. Should anyone emerge as Vlad’s new challenger, he might want to bow out right away or get himself a food-taster or flunky to start his car every morning.

After all, death solves all problems. No man, no problem.