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Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport shortly after returning from treatment abroad for an alleged poisoning attempt on his life by Russia’s FSB spy agency.
Navalny, whose investigations into corruption in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle have sparked protests and angered the country’s most powerful men, had vowed to return home despite signs that the Kremlin was preparing to arrest him.
Navalny was detained by police shortly after his flight from Berlin landed on Sunday night. It was scheduled to land at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where hundreds of supporters had gathered. Authorities closed the airport at the last minute, with Navalny’s plane diverted to Sheremetyevo and away from the waiting media.
Navalny spokesman Kira Yarmysh said the Kremlin was terrified by Navalny and by the images showing large crowds wanting to greet him. “Until recently, it was impossible to believe that [the authorities] they were so scared. But here is the confirmation ” she tweeted.
After landing back in Russia, Navalny and his wife left the plane before getting on an airport bus with other passengers to the terminal building. He said he was “very happy to be back,” adding: “This is the best day in the last five months.” All the criminal cases against him were fabricated, he said, adding that justice was on his side.
Police officers met Navalny at passport control and detained him. Navalny kissed his wife goodbye and disappeared with the officers.
The official cause for Navalny’s arrest was that he did not appear for a parole hearing. He could face years behind bars if a suspended sentence he received in 2014 is modified to a prison sentence.
Hundreds of his supporters defied the ban on protests at the airport to meet with the returning dissident. Shortly before their plane landed, the ‘Omon’ riot police entered the terminal and arrested dozens. There were shouts of “fascists” as partisans were dragged away.
Earlier, Navalny was in a good mood on the plane shortly before his arrest and told reporters who flew with him from Berlin: “I am not afraid.” He said he was “extremely happy” to return to Russia after nearly five months of recovery in Germany.
He joked that he was more concerned about the freezing winter conditions awaiting him in his hometown than about the authorities. “What bad things can happen to me inside Russia,” he joked, saying: “I have every right to return.”
Russian police had threatened to jail Navalny, in an apparent effort to keep him in exile in Berlin, where he had been recovering from the poisoning attempt since August. Doctors at the Charité clinic in Berlin identified the poison used against him as a member of the Novichok family, similar to that used in the Salisbury attacks.
While in Berlin, Navalny had participated in an investigation by the Bellingcat website into the attempt on his life, which exposed an FSB assault squad that had followed him across the country for years. Navalny personally obtained a confession from a member of the operation in a revelation deemed deeply embarrassing to the agency and to Putin, a former KGB officer and former head of the FSB. Putin, who never refers to Navalny by name, had dismissed the Bellingcat report as a “forgery.”
Since then, Russian investigators have increased pressure on Navalny, who has built a political and investigative operation that has become one of the most vocal and effective critics of Putin and his entourage.
Talking with him independent television channel Rain, opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza said a “smart” regime would have ignored Navalny’s return. He described the Putin regime as “not smart” and said it had gone to great lengths to ensure that Navalny remained in exile.
Kara-Murza compared Putin’s behavior to that of Yuri Andropov, the leader of the Soviet politburo and hard-line head of the KGB. Andropov deported high-profile critics to the west, including writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and human rights activist Vladimir Bukovsky.
Navalny had every right to return home regardless of the likelihood of his arrest, Kara-Murza said. He added: “You can only be a Russian politician from Russia. Outside you lose relevance “.
Moscow’s prison service said earlier this week it had warrants to arrest Navalny for missing parole hearings during his convalescence, which could turn a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence that expired in December into a stiff sentence. from prison.
And Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into an alleged misappropriation of funds from its anti-corruption fund that could carry a sentence of a decade if brought to trial.
Navalny had explained her decision to return home by saying that she had “never considered the decision to return or not.”
“I survived,” he said in a video with more than 1.9 million views on Instagram. And now Putin, who gave the order for my assassination, is screaming in his bunker and ordering his servants to do everything possible to prevent me from returning. His servants are acting as usual: inventing new criminal cases against me. “
But, he said, he would return anyway. “Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, I miss them.”
Russian police have repeatedly launched criminal investigations against Navalny over the past decade that have kept him in court or trapped at his home under house arrest. His brother Oleg also served three and a half years in prison for the same embezzlement case in which Navalny received a suspended sentence. You said the accusation was political. But so far authorities have avoided giving Navalny a lengthy prison sentence, probably to avoid provoking a backlash.
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