In the early 1980s, while living in exile in West Germany, the late dissident Soviet astrophysicist Kronid Lyubarsky participated in a survey for a magazine about life in the Soviet Union. One question asked what the most productive US policy towards the USSR would be. “Firm pressure” on the Soviet Union to initiate domestic changes, was Lyubarsky’s response, adding that the US would need “patience in following this line since it doesn’t lead to immediate success”. I thought of Lyubarsky’s response recently when Joe Biden criticised what he described as the “politically motivated” imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition figure, and approved an executive order imposing new sanctions on those responsible for the military coup in Myanmar. I thought of Lyubarsky’s calling for “patience”, while also thinking that such “firm pressure” from the Biden administration – whether rhetorical or economic – was bound to have little effect, let alone lead to “immediate success”.