In plain sight Putin's doing-in Kremlin's star Critic .

Who Will Save Alexei Navalny?

Michael Weiss on Yahoo News

Thu, April 22, 2021

“If you saw me now—maybe you would have a good laugh,” Alexei Navalny wrote on Facebook April 20. “Look at him! A skeleton walking, wobbling around his prison cell. In his hands he is holding his court ruling, rolled up in a tube. With that tube he fervently swings away at mosquitoes covering the walls and the ceiling of his cell. Those buzzing stinging monsters can finish up a man faster than any hunger strike.”

The tone is characteristic of the world’s most famous political prisoner: comic stoicism in the face of approaching death combined with a Gogolian fascination for all the absurdities and trivialities still imposed by a cruel Russian system responsible for its arrival.

Navalny has been starving himself for three weeks. It is a feeble protest, perhaps, against being an involuntary guest of a 21st century gulag, but at least it is wholly his own. For someone who eight months ago was almost killed with a weapon of mass destruction (Novichok), Navalny seems determined to go on being Navalny until the very end, which could be “any minute” now, according to his physician who has not been allowed to examine his patient and can only make diagnoses from afar, based on blood test results.

Navalny risks kidney failure and cardiac arrest owing to abnormally high levels of potassium and creatinine in his blood (“After Novichok,” Navalny wrote, “potassium is not a biggie”). He has been transferred from one miserable penal facility to another where he is now on a regimen of “vitamin therapy.”

No one believes Navalny is being treated; rather, he is being gradually murdered in an internationally exhibited snuff film executive produced and directed by Vladimir Putin.

“I think they will kill him,” a former senior U.S. official, someone I typically turn to for good news, not bad, told me this week. “I don’t think they’ll do a last-minute release back to Germany [where Navalny recuperated from his Novichok poisoning last August] or something like that. Their goal is to watch Navalny slowly die in prison.”

And what can the United States do, or better yet, what is it willing to do to stop “them” and this obscenity? Judging by President Joe Biden’s rhetoric, not much. Navalny’s plight, Biden told reporters last week, was “totally, totally unfair, totally inappropriate,” which is something one says of a lousy referee call on the pitch, not live-streamed, slow-motion homicide.

The messaging, however, is clear: Putin may be a soulless killer but he nevertheless runs an aggressive nuclear hyperpower with which the United States seeks to have “a stable and predictable relationship,” as the White House readout of Biden’s call with him on April 13 stated. Good luck with that, you might say, but the readout ended by telegraphing Biden’s openness to a “summit meeting in a third country in the coming months.” It made no mention of Navalny, who may well be dead by then.

The backdrop to this cautiously extended olive branch is also obvious: the Russian Army could very well be in a “third country” uninvited in the coming days: Ukraine.

As of this writing there are reportedly anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 Russian troops currently deployed to occupied Crimea and the Russian border of the Donbas, itself occupied by undeclared Russian soldiers and intelligence officers masquerading as “separatists.” These troops are joined by a steady increase in warplanes, attack helicopters, tanks, cruise missiles and all the other matériel necessary for a conventional invasion.

Is one forthcoming or is this just a well-choreographed intimidation exercise intended more for Washington’s sake than for Kyiv’s? Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered a partial withdrawal from the border a day after Putin’s annual press conference April 21, in which the Russian president spoke of “red lines” against “insults and interference, including in elections,” and he darkly insinuated that the U.S. had just failed to assassinate his client, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a claim White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said has “no basis in fact.” Last year, the fear among Russia watchers from Washington to Tallinn was that Putin might intervene militarily in Belarus, if not annex the entire country in a definitive move to quell a rising protest movement over stolen election and expand Russian hard power closer into NATO’s backyard. Now, he threatens to re-invade Ukraine.

Biden would no doubt think it more than “unfair” and “inappropriate” of his having to navigate any hot crisis in Easter Europe within the first year of his presidency. A pandemic still rages, China rises, and the U.S. has to withdraw from a 20-year campaign in Afghanistan, to say nothing of roiling domestic cultural crises.

Moreover, Biden already has his hands full with peaceful Europe. See Czechia’s recent disclosure that in 2014, a team of Russian military intelligence operatives blew up an ammunition depot in a village in the east of the country. And not just any operatives: two of them, Col. Alexander Mishkin and Col. Anatoly Chepiga, were the assassins responsible for later trying to murder Emilian Gebrev, a Bulgarian arms dealer in Sofia in 2015 and the former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. Mishkin and Chepiga’s weapon of choice in both instances was Novichok in what may have been proof of concept for the later operation to kill Russia’s opposition leader, at least the first time around.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN there would be “consequences” if Russia eliminated Navalny in prison. What kind? Sullivan did not elaborate. Nor do we know if he relayed them to Nikolai Patrushev, the chairman of the Russian Security Council, with whom he has his own phone call this week, this one ending with “let’s keep in touch.”

Presumably Navalny would rather Sullivan got his retaliation in first, as a form of deterrence. But neither the U.S. nor E.U. seems eager to impose sanctions before Navalny’s demise. And Angela Merkel, once Navalny’s primary caretaker-in-exile, has reaffirmed her commitment to Russia’s controversial Nord-Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Europe, which the U.S. opposes.

What about sanctioning those hemisphere-hopping Russian oligarchs Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation named when he was first arrested upon his arrival back in Moscow from Berlin in January? That list was divided in three categories, the last two consisting of Russian human rights abusers and those specifically linked to Navalny’s persecution. But the first category is the one that would rattle the Kremlin the most: “Oligarchs upon whom Putin has bestowed wealth and power, and who wield it on behalf of the regime.”

The official excuse I hear from U.S. policymakers is that designating “oligarchs for being oligarchs isn’t how sanctions work.” Washington has to establish a predicate offense. The unofficial excuse I hear is that going after foreign billionaires who act as agents or plenipotentiaries of the Kremlin abroad is embarrassing because they’re so deeply entrenched in the Western financial system—banks, media companies, sports clubs, and real estate. Doing so would only expose the West’s see-no-evil policy with respect to money-laundering, lobbying and kleptocracy, the taints of which should now be obvious to anyone who survived the Trump era.

Putting our own house in order might make it more difficult for Putin to destroy his since there’s no use stealing in Moscow what you can’t spend in London, Paris and New York. As Navalny’s aide Vladimir Milov told me recently, “You don’t have to separate the human rights agenda from realpolitik. They’re inextricable now.”

And so, all across Russia’s eleven time zones, the people have done what they can and turned out to demonstrate for the dying hunger striker who has spent a decade telling them with blog posts and YouTube videos that they deserve better. Again we have seen the stirring scenes of young and old defy riot police and arbitrary detention in an authoritarian state. The solidarity and support have already made a difference to the prisoner. “[T]here is no better weapon against injustice and lawlessness,” Navalny wrote. “This is what keeps me alive right now. Despite the very high level of potassium.”

We in the West are left to hope it will work—while secretly suspecting, like the former U.S. official, that it won’t.

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NAVALNY: 'The Putin Regime Is Trying to Kill Him'!

TIME: Alexei Navalny's Ailing Health Is Worrying the World

ALEXEI NAVALNY, the Russian opposition figure and Kremlin antagonist, has been moved into a prison hospital, Russia’s state penitentiary service (FSIN) said on Monday, after doctors warned he was in extremely poor health and could have only days to live. But friends and colleagues called the transfer a Kremlin “ploy” to convince the world he was being treated, and that his life was still very much in danger.

FSIN said that Navalny’s health was “satisfactory” and that he was being examined by a doctor every day. But Vladimir Ashurkov, Executive Director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) told TIME that the hospital does not offer an “adequate level of care for his condition”, and that the prison authorities continue to deny independent doctors the ability to assess Navalny. “There is nothing positive about this transfer – it is a ploy by the Kremlin to convince Russians that everything is okay,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian democracy activist and chair of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation For Freedom, said.

Navalny’s health has been deteriorating since he was imprisoned, and he began a hunger strike three weeks ago to protest his lack of medical treatment. On Saturday, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, a cardiologist, published test results in a Facebook post that he said showed Navalny had heightened creatinine levels that could cause kidney failure, and high levels of potassium that could lead to a cardiac arrest at “any moment”.

His friends and colleagues say that the Russian government is denying him proper care to make a statement. “The Putin regime is trying to kill him slowly, painfully and for the whole world to see. This echoes back to some of the most horrific pages in the history of the Soviet gulag and now the modern gulag under Putin,” said Kara-Murza.

When did Navalny’s health begin to deteriorate?

Putin’s fiercest critic only recently spent five months in Berlin recovering from a poisoning that he said was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. (The Kremlin denies Navalny’s claims and has said it has seen no evidence that Navalny was poisoned.) Upon his return to Moscow on Jan. 17 he was arrested and on Feb. 2, he was sentenced to two and half years in jail for violating parole from a case dating back to 2014, which he claims was politically motivated.

The sentence prompted international outrage, with President Joe Biden on Feb. 4 saying “He should be released immediately and without condition.” The E.U. and U.S. slapped sanctions on several Russian officials, including asset freezes and travels bans.

Within weeks of being imprisoned, Navalny complained in Instagram posts about pain and numbness in his back and leg. (It’s not yet clear whether the pain was connected to the poisoning.) He also said that he has experienced treatment amounting to “torture” through sleep deprivation, claiming that guards woke him up every hour throughout the night. Other inmates, he said, were banned from speaking with him or forced by prison authorities to inform on his movements.

On March 31, he announced he was starting a hunger strike to protest the prison authorities’ refusal to grant him medical attention. “I have the right to be seen by a doctor and get medicine,” he said in an Instagram post on March 31.

A dozen days into his hunger strike, Navalny said in an Instagram post that prison guards shoved candy in his pockets to tease him. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who visited him on April 13 said that he weighed 76kg (167 lbs), 9kg (19lbs) less since he began refusing food.

Navalny’s personal physician, Anastasia Vasilyeva, and three other doctors attempted to visit Navalny on Sunday, April 18. Vasilieva posted a video on Twitter claiming that they had “stood for two hours and begged” to be let into the jail, but they were refused entry.

Ashurkov said the authorities have refused to provide proper medical treatment to Navalny in prison as punishment for his anti-corruption activism, including his YouTube investigation posted on Jan. 19, alleging that members of Putin’s inner circle spent $1.35 billion in illicit funds to build the president an opulent on the Black Sea. “We are confident that all major decisions regarding his well-being are made by President Putin. The fact that he is in prison and being denied proper medical care is, in my opinion, a direct order from the very top,” he said.

How has the Russian opposition responded?

Navalny’s FBK organization had originally planned to hold protests for the release of the Kremlin’s most prominent critic later this Spring. But in response to reports about his deteriorating, health Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, and Ivan Zhdanov, FBK’s director, in a YouTube video on April 18 urged people to protest in squares across the country on Wednesday 21 April, the same day as Putin’s annual state of address. “They’re murdering Alexei Navalny — in a terrifying way right before our eyes,” Volkov said in the video.

The stakes for those Navalny’s supporters who choose to protest are high. Thousands of people were detained in a vicious police crackdown during mass protests across Russia in January and February that called for the activist’s release.

The authorities appear to have accelerated their attempts to silence Navalny’s team. On April 16, Russian prosecutors asked a Moscow court to designate FBK and other organizations linked to Navalny as “extremist”. The list currently names 33 organizations, including Islamic State, The Taliban and Jehovah’s Witnesses. If approved, the move would outlaw their operations and could result in jail time for its members. The prosecutors said such organizations create conditions for “changing the foundations of the constitutional order” and called their activities “undesirable”, in a statement.

Ashurkov believes the Kremlin is trying to distract the public from the declining level of support for Putin’s ruling United Russia Party, largely driven by frustration over deteriorating living standards, ahead of parliamentary elections in September. According to a March survey by the Moscow-based independent pollster, the Levada-Center, 27% of respondents support the United Russia party, down from 31% last August. “He’s trying to eliminate his most potent political opponent and our organization,” Ashurkov said.

Russian's jailed critic Navalny 'on verge of death'

A DOCTOR FOR imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, said his health is deteriorating rapidly and the Kremlin critic could be on the verge of death.

Physician Yaroslav Ashikhmin said that test results he received from the 44-year-old’s family show him with sharply elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys.

“Our patient could die at any moment,” he said in a Facebook post.

Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Navalny-backed Alliance of Doctors union, said on Twitter that “action must be taken immediately”

.

Navalny is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most visible and adamant opponent.

His personal physicians have not been allowed to see him in prison. He went on hunger strike to protest the refusal to let them visit when he began experiencing severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs.

Russia’s state penitentiary service has said that Navalny is receiving all the medical help he needs.

Navalny was arrested on January 17 when he returned to Russia from Germany, where had spent five months recovering from Soviet nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

Russian officials have denied any involvement and even questioned whether he was poisoned, which was confirmed by several European laboratories.

Asked about Navalny’s worsening condition, US President Joe Biden told reporters: “It’s totally, totally unfair and totally inappropriate. On the basis of having the poison and then on a hunger strike.”

Navalny was ordered to serve two-and-a-half years in prison on the grounds that his long recovery in Germany violated a suspended sentence he had been given for a fraud conviction in a case that he says was politically motivated.

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Alexei Navalny: Amnesty International says he's enduring conditions that amount to torture

PARIS (Reuters) - Alexei Navalny, the prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is incarcerated in conditions that amount to torture and may slowly be killing him, human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

Amnesty International said Navalny, who last year was poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, was now being subjected to sleep deprivation and did not have access to a doctor he could trust in jail.

"Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him," Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International's secretary general, told Reuters ahead of the publication of the group's annual report.

"Clearly the Russian authorities are violating his rights. We have to do more," she said. "(They) have already attempted to kill him, they are now detaining him, and imposing prison conditions, that amount to torture."

Navalny went on a hunger strike last week in an attempt to force the prison holding him outside Moscow to provide him with proper medical care for what he said was acute pain in his back and legs.

The Kremlin has declined to comment on his health, saying it is a matter for the federal penitentiary service. The penitentiary service last week said the 44-year-old was receiving all necessary treatment.

Navalny was jailed in February for two and a half years for parole violations that he called politically motivated. Moscow, which has cast doubt over his poisoning, paints Navalny as a Western-backed troublemaker bent on destabilising Russia.

Callamard said Navalny's ill-treatment came at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic had exacerbated inequalities and increased state-sponsored repression in some countries.

Certain governments had instrumentalised the pandemic against minority groups to repress dissent and human rights, while in other countries there had been a near-normalisation of emergency measures that restricted civil liberties, she added.

"COVID has amplified oppression," Callamard said.

(Reporting by Lucien Libert in Paris; Editing by Richard Lough and Matthew Lewis)

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Sky News: Russia hit with sanctions over attempted murder & jailing of Alexei Navalny

Ian Collier, news reporter 1 hour ago

THE United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions targeting a number of senior Russian officials and businesses over the attempted murder and jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The 27-nation bloc and the US imposed bans on travel and froze the assets of a number of members of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. They are:

• Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation

• Igor Krasnov, the prosecutor general

• Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard

• Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Prison Service

• Aleksandr Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)

• Andrei Yarin, chief of the Presidential Policy Directorate

• Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Executive Office

• Aleksey Krivoruchko, deputy minister of defense

• Pavel Popov, deputy minister of defense

An EU statement said the four were listed "over their roles in the arbitrary arrest, prosecution and sentencing of Mr Navalny, as well as the repression of peaceful protests in connection with his unlawful treatment".

US secretary of the treasury Janet Yellen, said: "The Kremlin's use of chemical weapons to silence a political opponent and intimidate others demonstrates its flagrant disregard for international norms.

"We join the EU in condemning Alexei Navalny's poisoning as well as his arrest and imprisonment by the Russian government."

Meanwhile, the US announced 14 businesses, most of which it said were involved in production of biological and chemical agents, have also been targeted.

Senior members of president did not immediately identify the Russian officials named in them.

One official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the sanctions would be the first of several steps by Joe Biden's administration to "respond to a number of destabilising actions".

Mr Biden has pledged to confront Mr Putin for alleged attacks on Russian opposition figures and hacking abroad, including of US government agencies and US businesses.

Mr Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator, was arrested in Moscow in January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

In February, a court sentenced the 44-year-old to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany.

The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Mr Navalny has rejected as fabricated.

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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny jailed, declares Putin 'the Underwear Poisoner'

by Andrew Osborn, Maria Tsvetkova

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Tuesday, ignoring the West in a ruling the opposition politician blamed on President Vladimir Putin’s personal hatred and fear of him.

The Moscow court handed Navalny a three-and-a-half-year sentence, but his lawyer said the anti-corruption blogger would actually serve two years and eight months in jail because of time already spent under house arrest.

His lawyers said they would appeal.

The decision, which followed nationwide protests calling for Navalny’s release, will further strain relations with the West, which is considering imposing sanctions on Russia over its handling of the case.

The United States, Britain, Germany and the EU urged Moscow to immediately free Navalny, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying Washington would coordinate closely with allies to hold Russia accountable.

Russia is already under numerous Western sanctions however, and analysts say the West’s options for more pressure are limited. A Navalny ally had urged the West before the hearing to hit Putin’s inner circle with personal sanctions.

Russia has suggested that Navalny is a CIA asset, a charge he rejects, and has told the West to stay out of its domestic affairs.

Navalny, one of Putin’s most prominent critics, was arrested on Jan. 17 for alleged parole violations after returning from Germany where he had been recovering from being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.

Navalny said Russian state security agents had put the poison in his underpants, something the Kremlin denied. He used Tuesday’s hearing to try to frame Putin’s place in history.

“(Putin’s) only method is killing people. However much he pretends to be a great geo-politician, he’ll go down in history as a poisoner. There was Alexander the Liberator, Yaroslav the Wise, and Putin the Underwear Poisoner,” said Navalny.

His supporters, on hearing the ruling, encouraged people to gather in central Moscow though riot police had already taken up position. The Moscow metro shut down three central stations.

Reuters reporters saw hundreds of protesters and the police detain some of them violently. Some of them chanted, “Putin is a thief!” and “Putin is a poisoner!”

Outside the court earlier on Tuesday, Reuters reporters saw riot police detain around 70 of Navalny’s supporters. The OVD-Info monitoring group later reported 1,408 arrests nationwide, over 1,000 of those in Moscow.

After his arrest, Navalny released a YouTube video making allegations about Putin’s wealth that was viewed over 100 million times. The Kremlin said it was false.

Tuesday’s hearing focused on Navalny’s alleged parole violations over a suspended sentence in a 2014 embezzlement case Navalny says was trumped up.

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Russian police detain over 450 at protests over Alexie Navalny's jailing

Protesters chant "Putin is a thief"

by Tom Balmforth and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber 5 hrs ago Reuters

Police detained more than 450 people at rallies in Siberia and Russia's Far East on Sunday as supporters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny took to the streets to protest his jailing, despite biting cold and the threat of arrest.

The rallies, also set to take place in Moscow and other cities later on Sunday, follow large protests last weekend and are part of a campaign to pressure the Kremlin into freeing President Vladimir Putin's most prominent opponent.

The opposition politician was arrested on Jan. 17 after returning to Moscow from Germany where he had been recovering from a nerve agent poisoning in Russia last summer. He accuses Putin of ordering his murder, which the Kremlin denies.

Police have said the protests have not been authorised and will be broken up, as they were last weekend. Over 4,000 people were detained at those rallies, according to OVD-Info, a protest monitoring group.

In the far eastern city of Vladivostok, where a protest began at 0200 GMT, police prevented protesters from accessing the centre, forcing them to relocate to the waterfront and the frozen waters of the Amur Bay.

Video footage showed protesters chanting "Putin is a thief" as they linked hands and marched on the ice in temperatures of around -13 Celsius (8.6 Fahrenheit).

In Tomsk, the Siberian city that Navalny visited before suddenly collapsing on a domestic flight last August, demonstrators gathered in front of a concert hall and chanted "Let him go!" and held up Russian flags.

OVD-Info said police had so far detained 465 people, including 108 in Vladivostok.

Dozens of people in the east Siberian city of Yakutsk turned out in temperatures of -42 C (-44 F).

"This is the first time I've come to a protest. I'm just fed up with the total lawlessness of the authorities," said Ivan, a protester who declined to give his surname.

The protest is a test of Navalny's support after many of his prominent allies were targeted in a crackdown this week. Several, including his brother Oleg, are under house arrest.

"If we stay quiet, then they could come for any of us tomorrow," Yulia Navalnaya, the Kremlin critic's wife, wrote on Instagram.

METRO STATIONS IN MOSCOW

There was an eerie quiet in central Moscow under falling snow after police took highly unusual steps to seal off the planned protest location to pedestrians and closed some metro stations. Officers could be seen turning people away.

Police deployed in force before the rally due to start at 0900 GMT. The measures prompted Navalny ally Leonid Volkov, who is outside Russia, to move the protest location to a site on the Garden Ring road that circles the city centre.

Protesters had planned to gather near the Kremlin administration and the headquarters of the FSB, the KGB's successor, where during the Soviet breakup protesters in 1991 famously pulled down a statue of the secret police's founder.

Navalny, 44, is accused of parole violations which he says are trumped up. A court is due to meet next week to consider handing him a jail term of up to three and a half years.

The West has told Moscow to let Navalny go and his allies have appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on 35 people who they say are Putin's close allies.

Seeking to galvanise supporters at home, Navalny put out an online video this month that has been viewed over 100 million times, accusing Putin of being the ultimate owner of a sumptuous Black Sea palace. The Kremlin leader has denied this.

On the eve of the protests, Arkady Rotenberg, a businessman and Putin's former judo sparring partner, said he owns the property.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth, Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Anton Zverev, Polina Ivanova, Maria Tsvetkova and Polina Nikolskaya; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Frances Kerry and Raissa Kasolowsky)

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Navalny ally vows to press for his freedom despite crackdown

by DARIA LITVINOVA January 26, 2021 AP NEWS

MOSCOW (AP) — A top ally of Alexei Navalny vowed Tuesday to keep up the fight to free the jailed Russian opposition leader and his battle to influence this year’s parliamentary election despite a government crackdown on nationwide protests and its attempts to create a climate of fear.

U.S. officials said President Joe Biden raised concerns about Navalny’s arrest in his call Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the G7 foreign ministers also criticized the jailing of Navalny and the demonstrators demanding his release.

Lawyer and politician Lyubov Sobol told a news conference that Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his team’s regional offices will continue to operate even amid the “arrests of our followers and allies, open criminal probes (and) criminal probes that are yet to come.”

Sobol, herself under investigation on criminal charges of trespassing that she insists are bogus, said she is not afraid of being arrested and doesn’t plan to leave the country.

“It would be hard to say that I’m prepared for it, but silence, fear and indifference are more dangerous,” she told reporters.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, was arrested and jailed earlier this month after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had spent nearly five months recovering from a poisoning with a deadly nerve agent that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny the accusations.

The politician faces a prison term, with authorities accusing him of violating the terms of a 2014 conviction for fraud, a prosecution that he says was politically motivated.

On Saturday, nearly 4,000 people were detained across Russia during nationwide protests that drew tens of thousands demanding Navalny’s release, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group that monitors political arrests.

Authorities launched 20 criminal investigations in different regions in the aftermath of the protests, mostly on the charges of violence against police, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.

Dozens of Navalny associates in various cities were detained before the protests, including Sobol, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh and longtime ally Georgy Alburov. Sobol was released within hours and ordered to pay a fine, while Yarmysh and Alburov were jailed for nine and 10 days each.

“Putin is trying to stop people from protesting and fighting for their rights through fear and criminal probes,” Sobol said. “We can only continue our work in these circumstance"

The crackdown continued to bring international outrage. The top diplomats of the United States, Britain, Canada, France Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the high representative of the European Union, condemned the “politically motivated arrest and detention” of Navalny and said they were “deeply concerned by the detention of thousands of peaceful protesters and journalists.”

The Kremlin had earlier dismissed Western criticism as interfering with Russia’s internal affairs.

Navalny’s team has called for more demonstrations on Jan. 31 and Feb. 2, when a court is scheduled to consider motions to convert his suspended sentence into a real prison term.

Even if he is sent to prison, his supporters won’t be deterred, Sobol said, citing the political goals of stopping the Kremlin’s party, United Russia, in the upcoming parliamentary balloting.

“There are lots of plans and tasks for the nearest future, (as well as) midterm and longterm (ones), and everyone understands what needs to be done both tomorrow, and a month from now, and half a year from now,” Sobol said. “One of the main goals is to ... destroy the monopoly of United Russia in the parliamentary election that will take place this September.”

Navalny has launched a campaign known as “Smart Voting” that is designed to promote candidates who are most likely to defeat those from the dominant ruling party.

In 2019, the project helped candidates backed by Navalny win 20 of 45 seats on the Moscow city council, and regional elections last year saw United Russia lose its majority in legislatures in three cities.

Analysts believe Navalny is capable of influencing the parliamentary vote, a key for the Kremlin as it will determine who controls the State Duma in 2024. That’s when Putin’s current term expires and he is expected to seek reelection, thanks to constitutional reforms last year.

On Thursday, a court is scheduled to hear an appeal on the ruling to jail Navalny. When asked about a possible outcome, Sobol said that “we do live in an unpredictable country; what will happen next and tomorrow is literally unknown.”

She cited an example of police officers unexpectedly showing up at her home 10 minutes before the news conference.

Almost proving her point, an official interrupted the event minutes later, trying to serve a subpoena to a Navalny ally who wasn’t there.

“I (didn’t do it) on purpose, they come on their own,” Sobol said with a chuckle.

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Russia’s Vladimir Putin denies he owns opulent Black Sea palace

AS OPPOSITION URGE MORE PROTESTS

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed claims by opposition leader Alexei Navalny that he owns a luxury property on the Black Sea worth US$1.35 billion, as the opposition urged fresh nationwide demonstrations. Courts around Russia started handing down short jail sentences to demonstrators arrested during nationwide opposition rallies last weekend, while the foreign ministry accused US diplomats of encouraging Russians to join the protests.

Navalny’s aides urged his supporters to take to the streets again next Sunday ahead of a court case that could see Russia’s most prominent Kremlin critic put behind bars for more than three years.

The 44-year-old campaigner was detained just over a week ago when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had been recuperating from exposure to a Soviet-designed toxin.

He called on his supporters in dozens of cities to rally last weekend and released a two-hour investigation into the palatial seaside property to spur allies to demonstrate.

The rallies saw a record number of arrests, and Putin on Monday denied having anything to do with the property in Navalny’s video, which has now been watched 86 million times.

“Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did,” Putin said during a video call with Russian students.

Navalny’s report - his most-watched anti-corruption probe by far - claims the property is worth US$1.35 billion and features everything from an underground ice rink to a casino.

Leonid Volkov, a key aide to the Kremlin critic, urged Russians to take to the streets again on January 31 “or fNavalny’s freedom, for freedom for all, and for justice”.

Saturday’s rallies saw clashes between police and protesters, 3,700 of whom were detained according to the OVD-Info monitoring group.

Putin said on Monday that Russian citizens have the right to express themselves but that they must do so “within the framework of the law”.

Putin also said minors should not be encouraged to join the rallies, referring to a claim repeated by authorities that the opposition had encouraged young people to protest.

“That’s what terrorists do. They put women and children in front of themselves,” Putin said.

Political analyst Alexei Zakharov, who cited polls conducted at Moscow’s rally, said on Facebook that demonstrators were on average 31-years-old, while only 10 per cent of participants were 18 or younger.

The Russian foreign ministry on Monday repeated claims that US diplomats had encouraged Russians to participate in the rallies, and said it had lodged a “strong protest” with the American ambassador.

That allegation followed earlier claims by the Kremlin that the US embassy was interfering in Russian affairs by publishing protest routes ahead of the rallies.

An embassy spokeswoman said that it was “routine practice” for diplomatic missions to issue safety messages to their citizens abroad.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would probe American tech companies over “interference” related to the demonstrations.

Ahead of the rallies, Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor ordered social media platforms including YouTube and Instagram to delete calls for demonstrations posted on their platforms.

Navalny’s arrest was met with widespread condemnation in the West, with the European Union saying it was considering new sanctions on Russia - although EU ministers decided at a meeting Monday that this was “premature”, according to one European diplomat.

That allegation followed earlier claims by the Kremlin that the US embassy was interfering in Russian affairs by publishing protest routes ahead of the rallies.

An embassy spokeswoman said that it was “routine practice” for diplomatic missions to issue safety messages to their citizens abroad.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would probe American tech companies over “interference” related to the demonstrations.

Ahead of the rallies, Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor ordered social media platforms including YouTube and Instagram to delete calls for demonstrations posted on their platforms.

Navalny’s arrest was met with widespread condemnation in the West, with the European Union saying it was considering new sanctions on Russia - although EU ministers decided at a meeting Monday that this was “premature”, according to one European diplomat.

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Protests erupt in over 60 Russian cities today

By DARIA LITVINOVA and JIM HEINTZ on AP NEWS

Protests erupted in over 60 Russian cities on Saturday to demand the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent foe. Russian police arrested more than 850 protesters, some of whom took to the streets in temperatures as frigid as minus-50 Celsuis (minus-58 Fahrenheit)

.

In Moscow, about 5,000 demonstrators filled Pushkin Square in the city center, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks. Navalny’s wife Yulia was among those arrested.

The protests stretched across Russia’s vast territory, from the island city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk north of Japan and the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk, where temperatures plunged to minus-50 Celsius, to the Russia’s more populous European cities. The range demonstrated how Navalny and his anti-corruption campaign have built an extensive network of support despite official government repression and being routinely ignored by state media.

The OVD-Info group that monitors political arrests said at least 191 people were detained in Moscow on Saturday and more than 100 at another large demonstration in St. Petersburg. Overall, it said 863 people had been arrested by late afternoon in Moscow.

Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin and which Russian authorities deny. Authorities say his stay in Germany violated terms of a suspended sentence in a 2014 criminal conviction, while Navalny says the conviction was for made-up charges.

The 44-year-old activist is well known nationally for his reports on the corruption that has flourished under President Vladimir Putin’s government.

His wide support puts the Kremlin in a strategic bind — risking more protests and criticism from the West if it keeps him in custody but apparently unwilling to back down by letting him go free.

Navalny faces a court hearing in early February to determine whether his sentence in the criminal case for fraud and money-laundering — which Navalny says was politically motivated — is converted to 3 1/2 years behind bars.

Moscow police on Thursday arrested three top Navalny associates, two of whom were later jailed for periods of nine and 10 days.

Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was airlifted to Germany found no traces of poison and have challenged German officials to provide proof of his poisoning. Russia refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny was poisoned.

Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly poisoned him in August and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the recording as fake.

Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for a decade, unusually durable in an opposition movement often demoralized by repressions.

He has been jailed repeatedly in connection with protests and twice was convicted of financial misdeeds in cases that he said were politically motivated. He suffered significant eye damage when an assailant threw disinfectant into his face. He was taken from jail to a hospital in 2019 with an illness that authorities said was an allergic reaction but which many suspected was a poisoning.

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Alexei Navalny's probe & Vladimir Putin's 'palace'

Diana Magnay Moscow correspondent @DiMagnaySky

He may be behind bars, but the Kremlin has not succeeded in silencing Alexei Navalny.

On his first full day in Moscow's Matrosskaya-Tishina prison, Mr Navalny's team have released a huge video investigation into the construction and alleged slush fund behind what is known as "Putin's palace", a £1bn private residence on Russia's Black Sea coast.

Calling it "Putin's biggest secret", Mr Navalny and his team reveal new details about the sprawling complex near the resort town of Gelendzhik which has long been rumoured to belong to the Russian president.

Drone footage over the grounds, which the team says are 39 times the size of Monaco, shows an underground ice hockey complex, 2,500 square metre greenhouse, and underground tunnel leading out to the Black Sea.

Architectural floor plans secured from a contractor shocked at the extent of the luxury reveal a lavish indoor theatre, fully-fledged casino and purple-tinted "hookah bar".

It is "the most expensive palace in the world", Mr Navalny says in the narration. "A new Versailles, new Winter Palace."

Mr Navalny says the idea for the investigation, which he presents from Germany, came during his time in intensive care.

He travels to Dresden to trace Vladimir Putin's path from lowly KGB operative on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain to the pinnacle of power in the Kremlin, showing how the friends he made in the 1990s have remained the principle beneficiaries of his kleptocratic regime to this day.

"Putin's personal money is kept by those he met 30 years ago", the investigation says. "In search of sponsors for the most corrupt ruler in the history of Russia, you need to go to his past."

He calls the Gelendzhik property the "biggest bribe in the world" and claims to have uncovered a scheme by which money for its construction is funnelled into offshore accounts by Mr Putin's cronies as payment for lucrative state contracts he has handed them over the years.

"The standout for me is how bizarre and cuckoo-in the head our president is," says Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of Mr Navalny and executive director of his now disbanded Anti-Corruption Foundation. "Why do you need a billion dollar palace which you would never really use, as president?"

The Kremlin has denied that Mr Putin owns a palace in Gelendzhik.

The almost two-hour video investigation ends with a plea to the Russian people to go out and protest. "If 10% of those who are disaffected take to the streets, the government will not dare falsify elections," Mr Navalny says.

It is a call he repeated in a video message from a Moscow police station on Monday, shortly before he was taken to jail.

In a hastily convened court session inside the police station, a judge ruled that his detention should be extended for 30 days, until 15 February.

On 2 February, a court will decide whether to convert a three-and-a-half year suspended sentence he was serving for an alleged embezzlement charge into a custodial sentence on the grounds that he violated the terms of his parole whilst convalescing in Germany.

Mr Navalny says all the various charges he has faced over the years are politically motivated.

His team are calling for a nationwide day of protest this Saturday. Mass gatherings are banned in Russia because of the pandemic and so far in Moscow, just two thousand people have registered as going on the Facebook page.

"The message about Putin's property will reach people in different formats and different channels," Mr Ashurkov says.

"It's unlikely that the regime will change tomorrow and we'll see hundreds of thousands of people on the streets but it's a campaign of constant pressure and history teaches us that the only constant throughout the decades is change."

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Alexei Navalny: a modern-day Lenin?

HITLER and the Nazi Party soon decided that gasing the Jews was cheaper and more efficient than shooting them. In Russia, Lenin prefered poisoning what he considered enemies of the State.

Thus,the Russian opposition activist, Alexei Navalny, is merely the latest Kremlin critic suspected to have been poisoned in dodgy circumstances. Over the last century a series of political opponents have fallen mysteriously ill. Many have died. All have seemingly been victims of Moscow’s secret poisons laboratory, set up by Vladimir Lenin in 1921.

Its purpose was to deal efficiently and mercilessly with perceived enemies of the state. Some were domestic, others troublesome exiles. According to Stalin’s former spy chief Pavel Sudoplatov, the KGB concluded long ago that poison was the best method for eliminating unwanted individuals. The KGB’s modern successor – the FSB – appears to share this view.

During the cold war, the KGB exterminated its adversaries in ingenious ways. In 1959 an assassin killed the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera using a cyanide spray pistol hidden in a newspaper. In 1979 another hitman murdered the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov as he waited for a bus on Waterloo Bridge in London. The weapon: a poison-tipped umbrella.

In the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, exotic murders stopped, at a time of cooperation between Russia and the west. Once Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, however, political killings stealthily resumed. There was speculation that the poisons factory – identified as a squat, gloomy, beige research building on the outskirts of Moscow – was back in business.

Possible victims included Roman Tsepov, Putin’s bodyguard in 1990s St Petersburg, who died after drinking tea in 2004 at a local FSB office. The same year, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya fell ill on a domestic flight to Rostov, losing consciousness after sipping tea on the plane. She survived. Two years later a gunman murdered Politkovskaya outside her Moscow flat.

Up to now the most notorious poisoning of the century took place weeks later. The target this time was Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned vehement Putin critic. Two Moscow assassins – Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi – met Litvinenko at the Millennium hotel in London. He swallowed a few sips of green tea laced with radioactive polonium, dying three weeks later.

The murder led to a long and acrimonious period in British-Russian relations. It also threw up a grim question: whether Putin signed off on state hits, or merely set broad policy parameters for his spy chiefs to interpret. A 2016 public inquiry in the UK ruled Putin had “probably” approved the operation, together with the then head of the FSB. Some government evidence remains secret.

In March 2018, another pair of Kremlin hitmen flew into London from Moscow, in much the same way Kovtun and Lugovoi had done 12 years earlier. Their target was Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent who had spied for MI6. The assassins were colonels in Russian military intelligence, working undercover: Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin.

According to the British government, Mishkin and Chepiga applied a Soviet-era nerve agent – novichok – to the front door handle of Skripal’s home in Salisbury. He and his daughter, Yulia, collapsed hours later on a city centre bench. They survived but another woman, Dawn Sturgess, died two months later after spraying novichok on her wrists. The UK and its allies expelled more than 150 embassy-based Russian spies.

Evidence of Putin’s personal involvement in poisonings remains circumstantial. We do not know how much he knows or the chain of command. But the large number of victims, at home and abroad, suggests the Kremlin views such episodes as an unpleasant but necessary evil. They send a message to society. It says that dissent has its limits, and that unbridled opposition to the state may carry a terrible price.

The immediate problem for Putin is how to handle Alexei Navalny's popularity as currently the most serious oppostion figure in Russia. Does he risk turning turn Navalny into a martyr by locking him up and throwing away the key or does he let him go and look weak? Hitherto, Putin has tried dismiss him as unimportant but this is harder to do when the facts on the ground seem to contradict this claim.

Even the manner of arrival of Navalny in Moscow last Sunday gave rise to historical comparisons with that of Vladimir Lenin's triumphant return to his home country on April 16, 1917*. Lenin’s arrival at Finland Station marked a turning point in Russian history. From this point, Lenin would go on to take the revolution into his own hands — and by early November (October O.S.), the Bolsheviks would seize power in what is today known as the October Revolution, setting the stage for the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Since his arrival last weekend the jailed anti-corruption blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny has called on Russians across the country to take to the streets.

“Do not be silent. Resist. Take to the streets – not for me, but for you,” Navalny said in a short video statement released after his hearing held in a police station, where an impromptu court had been set up a day after he was detained at Sheremetyevo after he arrived home from five months in Germany.

It is believed that Navalny appears to be hoping for a repeat of the 2013 demonstrations where thousands of people gathered outside the Kremlin walls to protest against his arrest at that time. On that occasion the Kremlin backed down and released him, but this time round the stakes are a lot higher.

On the same day as Navalny was arrested, Amnesty International officially named Navalny a prisoner of conscience.

At the same time, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, flew home with her husband and was with him, and in the camera’s focus, up until the point he was led away by police.

One scenario would be that Navalnaya stands for election in the September Duma elections in her husband's stead, copying opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's decision to do the same in the Belarusian election.

After her husband’s arrest, Navalnaya went out on to the street to address the waiting crowd.

“Alexei is not afraid. I’m not afraid either and I call on you all not to be afraid,” she said over chants of “Yulia!”

Navalnaya has been playing an increasingly public role since her husband was poisoned. She rapidly flew from Moscow to Omsk, where he had been hospitalised in a coma in August and publically berated the doctors who were refusing to let her see her husband, after they asked for proof that they were married.

She then co-ordinated the effort to get an ambulance plane from Germany to transport her husband to Berlin, as well as fielded questions from the press corps that quickly arrived on the scene.

In perhaps her boldest move, she directly addressed President Vladimir Putin, requesting permission to let them bring her husband to Berlin. The Russian authorities dragged their heels on releasing Navalny to the waiting plane for as long as they could, but with the high tech, well-equipped plane standing on the tarmac and Navalny in a critical condition they could not refuse. Navalnaya can take a large amount of credit for forcing that decision through.

The poisoning saga represented her “moment of transition from an accompanying figure to an independent character,” said Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Center in Moscow as cited by the Moscow Times. “Now that Alexei is arrested Navalnaya will act independently.”

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* After 17 years of exile in Europe, Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin staged a triumphant return to his home country on April 16, 1917, with aims to seize power from the Russian government and install a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” His return journey would change the course of world history in ways that are still being reckoned with.

Arriving at the Finland Station in Russia’s former capital of Petrograd (modern-day St. Petersburg), Lenin climbed atop an armored train car to address the thousands of his followers who had gathered. In a now-historic speech, Lenin argued that the Bolshevik Party must use armed force to seize control from the provisional government that had been formed after Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication.

“The people need peace; the people need bread; the people need land. And they give you war, hunger, no bread. … We must fight for the socialist revolution, fight to the end, until the complete victory of the proletariat. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!" he cried that night.

Lenin’s arrival at Finland Station marked a turning point in Russian history. From this point, Lenin would go on to take the revolution into his own hands — and by early November (October O.S.), the Bolsheviks would seize power in what is today known as the October Revolution, setting the stage for the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Alexei Navalny in Russia amid arrest threats

Fierce Kremlin critic and political campaigner Alexei Navalny headed back to Russia on Sunday, despite being warned by Russian authorities that he will be arrested upon his arrival.

Navalny left Berlin on a flight operated by Russian airline Pobeda and was scheduled to land at Moscow's Vnukovo airport. Just minutes before his arrival, however, Pobeda airline said the smaller airport was closed for arriving planes. The screens at Vnukovo then showed the flight as being diverted to Shermetyevo.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Navalny, confirmed his arrival to Shermetyevo and invited people to "come meet him."

"You might still make it!" they wrote on Twitter.

While reasons for switching airports were not immediately clear, Russian authorities have threatened to arrest Navalny upon return. On Sunday, Moscow police detained several of his aides at Vnukovo and cleared the crowd that gathered to welcome him at his scheduled destination. Security had been tightened around the Moscow airport awaiting Navalny's arrival. The 44-year-old called on his supporters to meet him there, but authorities warned against unauthorized rallies on the premises.

'What bad thing can happen to me in Russia?'

Before taking off from Berlin, Navalny told reporters he was "very happy" and was "sure everything will be great."

He dismissed the fears he would be arrested upon arrival.

"Arrest me upon landing!? That cannot be done," he said.

"What do I need to be afraid of? What bad thing can happen to me in Russia?" he told reporters, saying he was innocent of any wrongdoing and felt he was "a citizen of Russia who has every right" to go back to his native country.

Police in Moscow detain Navalny aides

While Navalny was in the air, however, his close ally Ivan Zhdanov reported that several of Navalny's associates were detained in Moscow while waiting for the politician's plane to land.

The Russian authorities detained dissident and anti-corruption lawyer Lyobov Sobol as well Navalny's assistant Ilya Pahomov, along with several others, according to Zhdanov, who leads Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). Navalny supporters posted this video from inside the airport, claiming that it showed the detainment of Sobol, Navalny's brother Oleg, and FBK official Ruslan Shaveddinov.

The news on Sobol's detainment was also confirmed by Russia's Dozhd TV. The independent broadcaster published a video of a man flying a Russian flag and chanting Navalny's name while at the same time calling President Vladimir Putin a "thief" at Vnukovo. The man was later detained, according to Dozhd.

Soon after, Dozhd reporter Eduard Burmistrov was also briefly detained while broadcasting live.

"Police officers literally grabbed me and are now dragging me somewhere," he said in the video posted on Twitter.

Earlier on Sunday, Sobol posted a video on her channel where she said she "went through [airport security] as usual."

The 33-year-old activist said she brought a special backpack with her because she had expected to be detained while making her way to the Vnukovo terminal.

Sobol added that "this is how it usually goes."

"I'm very happy that made it through the airport, that I'm sitting here and I'm very much hoping I would be able to meet Navalny and that there would be no provocations from the government," she told Russian Novaya Gazeta.

Navalny's wife makes movie reference before takeoff

"I'm flying home," Navalny posted from the tarmac.

The tweet links to a short video posted on his Instagram channel, which shows Navalny sitting in the plane next to his wife Yulia. He and his wife are seen taking off their face masks, with Yulia then saying, "Kid, get us some water, we are flying home" in reference to a final scene of the popular Russian movie "Brat 2." The 2000 film ends with a male and a female character taking a flight from the US to Moscow.

One of Putin's main rivals, Navalny was flown to Berlin in August last year after surviving an assassination attempt from the Novichok nerve agent.

Authorities intend to put the activist behind bars

The Russian federal prison service FSIN said on Thursday that it would take all actions necessary to detain him and had requested that his suspended sentence be upgraded to jail time.

Navalny was convicted in 2014 of fraud charges that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled unlawful.

"In theory, they can detain him as soon as he arrives [in Russia] but initially only for 48 hours," said Vadim Kobzev, one of Navalny's lawyers.

Moscow has denied all allegations of poisoning the anti-corruption activist although scientists in Germany, Sweden and France, as well as tests from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons all confirmed traces of the Soviet-era nerve-agent found on Navalny.

The activist also recorded a phone call with the agent who allegedly poisoned him admitting to his actions. Moscow has rejected the recordings as fake.

Navalny's poisoning and later treatment in Germany have been a source of contention between Russia and the EU.

Late last year, the European Union imposed travel bans and bank account freezes on several Russian officials over the incident, including the head of Russia's FSB intelligence service.

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Collision course: The Return of Alexei Navalny

Collision course Moscow: The Return of Alexei Navalny Five months after he was poisoned, the opposition leader is headed back to Russia. By Eva Hartog in POLITICO January 15, 2021

MOSCOW — The last time a plane carrying Alexei Navalny landed on Russian soil, the Russian opposition leader was unconscious and pilots had to make an emergency detour to save his life.

Five months later, after a miraculous recovery, a lucid Navalny plans to board a flight to Moscow this Sunday that will bring him back to the country where he suffered a near-fatal attack.

“I ended up in Germany, in an intensive-care box, for one reason: They tried to kill me,” Navalny said in an Instagram post announcing his arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport this weekend. “Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, I miss it.”

For Navalny, his return to Russia from Germany where he underwent treatment for poisoning from the military-grade nerve agent Novichok is at once a personal risk and a political boon. Notably, he is choosing to fly back with the airline Pobeda, Russian for “Victory.”

For the Russian authorities, however, his return spells nothing but trouble at the start of an important election year — trouble they were hoping to avoid by piling on the legal hurdles for Navalny and his entourage.

Most recently, in January, Russia’s penitentiary service asked a court to rule Navalny had breached the terms of his suspended sentence by staying in Germany. In a statement on Thursday, a day after Navalny’s Instagram post, it vowed to do “everything possible” to detain him upon his return to Russia.

It had all the semblance of a last-minute warning: Stay put, or else.

Pointing at Putin

That warning — or threat — seems to have fallen on deaf ears. As Russia’s No. 2 politician after President Vladimir Putin, Navalny has built his brand on refusing to be cowed. If anything, the poison attack has made him redirect his arrows at the very top of Russia’s pyramid of power.

From the moment he woke up from a medically induced coma in Berlin’s Charité Hospital in September, Navalny has accused Putin of personally being behind the poison attack (which the Russian president has denied). And he hasn’t stopped there.

Last month, building on an investigation by the journalism collective Bellingcat, Navalny prank-called a man whom he claimed worked for the FSB, tricking him into admitting the supposed involvement of the security services in his poisoning. A YouTube video of the call has been viewed more than 22 million times.

“No one has humiliated the FSB in this way in a long, long time — if ever,” said political commentator Konstantin Gaaze. “His return will be interpreted as an explicit challenge, there’s no doubt they will want to put him away.”

There are other reasons than revenge to want Navalny sidelined.

This autumn, Russians are set to vote for a new parliament to serve during the so-called power transition in the run-up to the end of Putin’s presidential term in 2024. Pundits are unsure about what will follow — will Putin hang on to the presidential seat, or appoint a successor while maintaining his grip on power? But whatever the preferred option, the Kremlin will want full control over the process.

Ahead of that election — and amid an economic downturn because of the coronavirus pandemic — commentators have pointed to a tangible tightening of the screws against dissent, including the hurried passing of a law late last year that allows individuals to be labeled as “foreign agents.”

Navalny’s “smart voting” strategy against the ruling party United Russia, which coordinates protest votes in challenges to their biggest contenders, and his ability to organize large street protests threaten to throw a spanner into the works.

Conspiracy theories

Russia has a tradition of dissidents returning to their homeland. Sometimes — as with Vladimir Lenin’s train ride in 1917 — they have triumphed. But then there is also the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, who returned to Russia in 2003 only to disappear behind bars for a decade.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, there has been a flood of speculation as to how the Russian authorities will thwart Navalny’s arrival.

Theories have ranged from the conventional (Navalny could be refused boarding on the pretext of COVID restrictions or detained on the runway and placed under house arrest) to the outlandish (the air carrier could be shut down, his flight canceled or a freak snow storm be used as an excuse to divert the plane).

Rather than a rich imagination, the speculation reveals a general sense of lawlessness after a summer that included a controversial vote on constitutional reforms which will allow Putin to stay in power beyond 2024 and Navalny’s brazen poisoning.

“If before we understood that Navalny could be jailed at any moment, now the scenario we have in mind is that he could be killed,” Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician and a close ally of Navalny’s told the Dozhd television channel.

Moreover, most commentators agree that political unrest in the United States ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden plays into the Kremlin’s hands by drawing international attention away from Russia.

Touchdown

Presumably in an effort to prevent his immediate arrest, Navalny has called upon his supporters to meet him at the airport on Sunday. A large turnout could convince the authorities to hold back — temporarily at least.

Then again, a low turnout could backfire and convince the hardliners in government that punitive measures against the opposition politician will go largely unprotested.

A poll by the independent Levada Center late last year showed that fewer Russians believed the Kremlin was behind the poisoning than those who suspect the West — echoing the Kremlin’s own claims of a foreign conspiracy. Most Russians, however, were indifferent or believed the entire poisoning was staged.

But the authorities have to tread carefully: Jailing Navalny could risk making a martyr out of him and be interpreted as a sign of weakness. But leaving him free practically guarantees he will be a nuisance. In deciding how to respond to that conundrum, the Russian authorities are like a character in a fighting video game, forced to pick a weapon before entering into battle.

“Тhere are a million different options of how it will play out, but Sunday will undoubtedly be a very sharp start to the political season,” said Gaaze.

Or, in the words of political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya on Telegram: “The situation with Navalny is very similar to two trains rushing towards each other, doomed to collide. There will be many victims.”

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