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After 32 days of treatment, Alexej Navalny, a poisoned Russian Kremlin critic, was released from the Berlin Charité. Image: sda
Navalny is on the mend and thus a more dangerous opponent for Putin than before
He wants to return to Moscow: Navalny is on his way home, while Putin is said to have confirmed the attack and the poison.
Head and hands still don’t always do what Russia’s most prominent opposition politician Alexei Navalny would like. But a month after the internationally condemned poison attack on him, the 44-year-old is already making so much progress that he talks every day.
First he shows his visibly weakened family on his sickbed, then, standing on the stairs, he thanks the “brilliant doctors” of the Charité who would have brought him back to life.
The internationally known photo: Nawalny’s first photo with relatives at the Charité. Image: keystone
And now he’s sitting on a park bench and on his way to rehab. The plan is a full recovery and then a return to Russia, and a new political fight against the system of the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin.
New state after the attack
The poison attack gave Navalny a “new status” as a politician, says Russian political scientist Tatiana Stanowaja. He hopes that Moscow’s leaders will further fight the opposition, with criminal prosecutions, propaganda campaigns and intimidation.
Anything Navalny does in the future will also have internal political consequences, for example for management policy, he says. The anti-corruption fighter and his team, repeatedly exposing bribery scandals in power structures, are far more dangerous for the Kremlin inside Russia than abroad.
Return to Moscow planned
Navalny’s team has always made it clear that, of course, Navalny will return to Moscow. There are enough offers of asylum in the West. But the politician is known for his combative attitude. Even after previous attacks or criminal proceedings by the authorities, he never allowed himself to be beaten.
According to his spokesman, he is still in Germany. But although there is still no regular air traffic between Germany and Russia due to the corona pandemic, special flights are organized again and again. Nothing stands in the way of a quick return.
For the Russian leadership, the case has long been the main nuisance on the international stage. Russia’s Foreign Ministry in Moscow again denied on Wednesday that Navalny should be killed with the neurotoxin, which is banned as a chemical weapon under the chemical weapons ban. Three western laboratories, including one from the German armed forces, have proven to be an agent of war.
But Russia is gritting its teeth with its demands that evidence be presented to German authorities. Therefore, the Russian ambassador Sergei Netschajew in the “Berliner Zeitung”, there are also no investigations in Russia. He asks Germany to cooperate in the case.
Navalny’s team, on the other hand, has had no doubt for weeks that the Kremlin itself was responsible for the attack. For this reason alone, Russia has no interest in investigating the crime, it is said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov even turned the tables and accused the “patient’s” staff, as he only calls Navalny, of having removed all possible traces.
The Kremlin’s propaganda has been turning the criminal case for weeks in such a way that German or Western intelligence agents could have poisoned Navalny. And there is also the reason: In the end, the West is only concerned with imposing sanctions on the giant empire and weakening it.
These are well-known reflexes that always come up when Kremlin opponents fall victim to attacks. And Putin’s spokesman never tires of arguing that cases are of no use to him and that the Kremlin has only downsides.
Hardly any opponents on the political game board: the head of the Kremlin, Putin. Image: keystone
In any case, Putin has always been able to expand his power after the deaths of many of his opponents, including opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, also because hardly anyone can stand up to him.
Putin is said to have confirmed war agents
Political scientist Stanowaja says in a Telegram post that the Kremlin has condemned itself in the meantime, not just because of the constant new versions that should traditionally cast doubts in people’s minds. Like many others these days, she is commenting on an article in the French newspaper “Le Monde” about Putin’s phone call with his Paris colleague Emmanuel Macron. Putin is said to have said there that Navalny probably poisoned herself to improve her position in politics.
It is unclear if the conversation notes are correct. But former intelligence chief Putin has long been relied on to make such statements. According to an analysis by Stanovaya, Putin has not only acknowledged the fact of the poisoning itself. With the comment of the former Soviet KGB officer, relayed in the article, that the Novitschok neurotoxin from the communist era could basically anyone today, Putin also confirmed the name of the war agent.
“Putin knows who poisoned him,” Stanovaya says, especially in light of Peskov’s statements that Putin would not be informed about the case. Putin does not need any information because he has everything, Stanovaya reads in the words.
And Navalny also speaks with his typically agile humor regarding the article. Clearly, he himself prepared the poison in the kitchen because he wanted to commit suicide to harm Russia. But this provocation has just failed. Navalny is alive and soon wants to resume the fight against Putin in Moscow. (sda / dpa)
