Poisoned Putin critic is arrested in Moscow
Alexei Navalny defied jail threats to return home from Germany
KREMLIN critic Alexei Navalny was arrested last night as he returned home to Russia for the first time since being poisoned with nerve agent novichok.
President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest opponent defied threats that he would be jailed on arrival after spending the last five months recovering in Germany.
As he boarded a Moscow-bound plane in Berlin yesterday afternoon, the 44-year-old told reporters: ‘This is the best moment in the last five months. I feel great. Finally, I’m returning to my home town.’
Russia’s prison service issued a warrant for his arrest last week but Mr Navalny, who was accompanied by his wife Yulia, made light of the threat, saying: ‘It’s impossible – I’m an innocent man.
‘What do I need to be afraid of? What bad thing can happen to me in Russia?
‘I feel like a citizen of Russia who has every right to return.’
But his supporters were denied the opportunity of giving him a
Detained for ‘parole violations’
hero’s welcome yesterday as he was detained at passport control at an airport outside Moscow.
He kissed his wife before being escorted by police.
His spokesman posted on Twitter: ‘Alexei was taken away by police officers at the border with no explanation given.’
Hundreds of supporters and journalists had gathered outside one Moscow airport in expectation of Mr Navalny’s arrival there but his flight was diverted at the last minute to another one 40km away.
Riot police detained several people, including prominent Moscow activist Lyubov Sobol, at the original airport as his supporters chanted ‘Russia will be free!’ and ‘Navalny! Navalny!’.
Mr Navalny was flown to Berlin for emergency treatment and spent weeks in a coma after being poisoned with novichok during a trip to Siberia in August.
Russian doctors, who initially treated him, claimed he had been left fighting for his life because of ‘low blood sugar’ – but after Navalny was air-lifted to Berlin for treatment experts concluded he had been exposed to a Soviet-era nerve agent.
The Kremlin denied any role in the poisoning but Mr Navalny continued to point the finger at Mr Putin as he recovered in Germany. Last month a report by investigative website Bellingcat identified his alleged assassins as agents from Russia’s FSB security service, and Mr Navalny elicited an unusual confession from one of his would-be murderers.
Posing as a senior official from the FSB, Mr Navalny called members of the alleged hit squad and one spilled the beans for nearly 50 minutes, apparently thinking he was talking to a superior. Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a chemical weapons specialist, unwittingly revealed that the assassins had applied the novichok to Mr Navalny’s underwear, adding: ‘Where the groin is... The crotch, as they call it. There is some sort of seams there, by the seams... They told us to work on the inner side of the underpants.’
The revelations embarrassed Russia, who dismissed them as fake. Russia’s prison service, the FSIN, later warned that Mr Navalny faced jail time on his return to Moscow for violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence he was handed on fraud charges.
The European Court for Human Rights had ruled that his conviction was unlawful.
Last night the FSIN confirmed Mr Navalny had been detained for multiple violations of parole and the terms of a suspended prison sentence. It added that he would be held in custody until a court makes a decision in his case.
European Union members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia called for the ‘imposition of restrictive measures’ against Russia following the arrest.