KREMLIN CRITIC NAVALNY FLIES TO RUSSIA DESPITE ARREST THREAT

Sun 17 January 2021:

Leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny plans to fly home to Russia on Sunday after recovering in Germany from his poisoning in August with a nerve agent.

Navalny is returning to Russia despite a risk of an arrest.

“Me, arrested? I’m an innocent person,” he told reporters when boarding the plane.

The 44-year-old opposition leader is flying back to Moscow after spending several months in Germany recovering from a poisoning attack that he said was carried out on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, who has blamed his poisoning on the Kremlin, charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was now trying to deter him from coming home with new legal motions. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the opposition leader’s poisoning.

Navalny fell violently ill on a flight over Siberia in August and was flown out to Berlin by medical aircraft in an induced coma.

Just a few minutes before take off #Navalny says he is very happy and hopes to have a good flight to Moscow. He says he doesn’t think he will be arrested upon arrival in Moscow pic.twitter.com/W1ywQiesbM

— Juri Rescheto (@juri_rescheto) January 17, 2021

Western experts concluded he was poisoned with a Soviet-designed nerve toxin Novichok.

The Kremlin denied involvement and Russian investigators said there were no grounds to launch a probe into the attack.

The FSIN said Thursday it had issued an arrest warrant for Navalny after he failed to report to its office. The prison service, which has asked a Moscow court to turn Navalny’s 3½-year suspended sentence into a real one, said it was “obliged to take all the necessary action to detain Navalny pending the court’s ruling.”

Security measures at the Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, where Navalny’s flight is due to land, were heightened on Sunday, with several prisoner-transport trucks parked outside.

Police pushing Navalny supporters from terminal. 25 mins to landing.

Many of his supporters were expected to try to gather in the terminal to welcome Navalny, if he is able to get through passport control without being arrested.

Several activists in Russia’s second city Saint Petersburg, who were travelling to Moscow to greet Navalny, said they were stopped by police at the city’s train station and airport.

People are being brutally detained in #Moscow just because they came to support #Navalny at the airport. Journalists, people from Navalny’s team ended up in police vans. It is good that the world is watching. Nothing can be worse than illusions of normality and good intentions pic.twitter.com/WtTKZIMk8h

— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) January 17, 2021

Groups opposed to Navalny are also planning to show up with a nationalist movement promising to welcome him with “zelyonka”, a bright green antiseptic solution that is commonly found in Russia.

For around a decade, Navalny has been the symbol of Russia’s protest movement, after rising to prominence as an anti-corruption blogger and leading anti-government street rallies.

Navalny’s team publishes YouTube investigations into the wealth of Russia’s political elites, some of which garner millions of views, making them a target of lawsuits, police raids and jail stints.

Moscow prosecutors on Friday warned against participating in the “public event” organised in Vnukovo airport, saying it has not been authorised.

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