Kremlin foe Navalny to fly home despite threats

MOSCOW » Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says he plans to go home to Russia despite the authorities’ threats to put him behind bars. Navalny, who has been convalescing in Germany from a poisoning with a nerve agent that he has blamed on the Kremlin, charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was now trying to deter him from coming home with new legal motions.

“Putin is stamping his feet demanding to do everything so that that I don’t return home,” Navalny said Wednesday while announcing his return on Instagram. “The people who tried to kill me got offended because I survived and now they are threatening to put me behind bars.”

At the end of December, the Federal Penitentiary Service warned Navalny that he faced a real prison term if he fails to immediately report to its office in line with the terms of a suspended sentence he received for a 2014 conviction on charges of embezzlement and money-laundering that he rejected as politically motivated.