Navalny heads back to Russia

LEADING Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has left Germany to return to Russia, where he faces the threat of arrest, after recovering from his poisoning in August with a nerve agent.

Mr Navalny, who announced last Wednesday that he planned to return, said he was “very happy” as he boarded a plane in Berlin bound for Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport yesterday.

It remains to be seen what reception awaits him in Moscow. Last Thursday, Russia’s prison service said he faced immediate arrest on his return.

Mr Navalny, who has blamed his poisoning on the Kremlin, said 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.

At the end of December, the country’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) warned Mr Navalny that he faced time in prison if he failed to immediately report to its office in line with the terms of a suspended sentence and probation he received for a 2014 conviction on charges of embezzlement and money laundering that he rejected as politically motivated.

The European Court for Human Rights has ruled that Mr

Navalny’s conviction was unlawful.