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 the Kremlin was preparing to arrest him.
Police detained Navalny shortly after his flight from Berlin landed on Sunday evening. It was due to touch down at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where hundreds of supporters had gathered. The authorities closed the airport at the last minute, and diverted Navalny’s plane to Sheremetyevo, away from waiting media.
Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said the Kremlin was terrified of Navalny and of images showing large crowds wanting to greet him. “Until recently, it was impossible to believe they [the authorities] were so scared. But here’s the confirmation,” she tweeted.
After landing in Russia, Navalny and his wife left the plane before trundling in an airport bus with other passengers towards the terminal building. He said he was “very happy to be back”, adding: “This is the best day in the last five months. I’m home.” The criminal cases against him were all “fabricated”, he said, adding that justice and truth were on his side.
Police officers met Navalny at passport control and detained him. Navalny kissed his wife goodbye and gave her a hug. He then disappeared with the officers.
The Moscow department of Russia’s federal penitentiary service confirmed that Navalny had been arrested. The official cause was failure to appear at a parole hearing. He could face years behind bars if a suspended sentence he received in 2014 is amended to a prison term.
Earlier, hundreds of his supporters defied a ban on protests at Vnukovo airport to meet the returning dissident. Soon before his plane was due to land, “Omon” riot police entered the terminal. They arrested dozens of people, including Navalny’s brother, Oleg, and close aides. There were cries of “fascists” as the supporters were dragged off.
Navalny was in good spirits on the plane shortly before his arrest, telling journalists who flew with him from Berlin: “I am not afraid.” He said he was “extremely happy” to be returning to Russia after almost five months recuperating in Germany.
He joked that he was more concerned by the freezing winter conditions awaiting him in his home city than he was of the authorities. “What bad things could happen to me inside Russia?” he quipped. “I have every right to come back.”
Russian law enforcement had threatened to jail Navalny in an apparent effort to keep him in exile in Berlin, where he had been recuperating since August. Doctors at Berlin’s Charité clinic identified the poison used against him as a member of the novichok family, similar to the one used in the Salisbury attacks.
While in Berlin, Navalny participated in an investigation by the website Bellingcat into the attempt on his life, which exposed an FSB hit squad that had shadowed him around the country for years. Navalny personally elicited a confession from a member of the operation in a revelation seen as deeply embarrassing for the agency and for Putin, a former KGB officer and one-time head of the FSB. Putin, who never refers to Navalny by name, had dismissed the Bellingcat report as a “falsification”.
Since then, Russian investigators have increased the 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.
Photo source: picture from an open source