MOSCOW (AP) – The return to Germany by opposition leader Alexei Navalny to Russia has been marked by chaos and popular outrage, and has almost predictably ended with his arrest.
The January 17 flight from Berlin, where Navalny spent nearly five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning, carried him and his wife with a group of journalists documenting the trip. But the plane was diverted from the proposed airport in Moscow to another one in the capital, which is seen as an apparent attempt to destroy a welcoming crowd.
Authorities also immediately arrested him, causing unrest in the country and abroad. Some Western countries have threatened sanctions and his team called for nationwide protests on Saturday.
Navalny has prepared his own surprise for his return: a video reveals that a lavish ‘palace’ for President Vladimir Putin has been built on the Black Sea through an extensive corruption scheme. His team posted it on YouTube on Tuesday and within 48 hours it has been viewed more than 42 million times.
Navalny faces years in prison for a previous conviction he claims was politically motivated, while political commentators say there are no good options for the Kremlin.
The AP looks at its long position with authorities:
WHO IS ALEXEI NAVALNY?
Navalny, 44, is an anti-corruption campaigner and the Kremlin’s fiercest critic. He has survived many opposition figures and is displeased by relentless efforts to stop his work.
He has released numerous damning reports on corruption in Putin’s Russia. He was a galvanizing figure in mass protests, including unprecedented 2011-12 demonstrations that resulted from reports of the widespread marches of a parliamentary election.
Navalny was twice convicted on criminal charges: fraud and later fraud. He received suspended sentences of five years and 3 1/2 years. He denounced the convictions as politically motivated, and the European Court of Human Rights disputed both convictions.
Navalny tried to challenge Putin in the 2018 election, but was prevented by one of his convictions. Nevertheless, he drew crowds of supporters almost everywhere he was in the country.
He is regularly arrested and has served several times in jail on charges of leading protests. In 2017, an attacker threw a green antiseptic liquid into his face and damaged his vision. He was also admitted to hospital in 2019 after a suspected poisoning while in jail.
None of that stopped him. In August 2020, he became ill during a domestic flight in Siberia, and the pilot quickly landed in Omsk, where he was admitted to hospital. His supporters managed to get him flown to Berlin, where he lay in a coma for more than two weeks and was diagnosed as having been poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent – an allegation denied by the Kremlin.
After recovering, Navalny released a recording of a call he made to a man who he said was a member of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who allegedly poisoned him. The FSB rejected the survey as a fake, but it still shocked many people at home and abroad.
Navalny promised to return to Russia and continue his work, while the authorities threatened him with arrest.
WHY DID NAVALNIE COME BACK AT ALL?
Navalny said he did not leave Russia by choice, but rather ended up in an intensive care unit in Germany. He said he had never considered the possibility of staying abroad.
“It does not seem good to me that Alexei Navalny is calling for a revolution from Berlin,” he explained in an interview in October, referring to himself in the third person. “If I do something, I want to share the risks with people who work in my office.”
Analysts believe that it would have been impossible for Navalny to remain relevant as an opposition leader outside Russia. “To stay abroad, to become a political emigrant, would mean death for a public politician,” said Masha Lipman, an independent political analyst.
Nikolai Petrov, a senior research fellow in Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program, expressed her sentiment, saying: ‘Active, bright people who can start some real actions and run in elections … while in the country, once abroad, ends up cut off from the real connection with the people. ”
WHY IS NAVALNIE PRISON NOW?
His suspended sentence due to the 2014 conviction had a probationary period that would expire in December 2020. Authorities said Navalny was subject to regular personal checks by law enforcement.
During the last days of Navalny’s probation, the Russian prison service put him on a wanted list, accusing him of not appearing for these checks, not even when he was recovering in Germany. Officials have asked the court to serve the full sentence of 3 years. Upon his return, Navalny was detained for 30 days, with a trial to review his sentence, scheduled for February 2.
Earlier this month, the Russian Committee of Inquiry opened another criminal investigation against him on charges of fraud, alleging that he embezzled donations to his anti-corruption foundation. If convicted, he could face up to ten years in prison.
IS NAVALNY THREATENING THE CREAM LINE?
Putin never mentions Navalny by name, and state-run media portray him as an unimportant blogger. But he has managed to spread his reach far beyond Moscow through his widely popular YouTube accounts, including this week’s allegations about the massive Black Sea estate.
His infrastructure of regional offices set up nationwide in 2017 helped him challenge the government by mobilizing voters. In 2018, Navalny launched a project called Smart Voting, designed to advance candidates likely to defeat those of the Kremlin’s dominant United Russia party.
In 2019, the project helped to win opposition candidates 20 of 45 seats in Moscow’s city council, and in the local elections last year, United Russia lost its majority in the legislators in three cities.
Navalny has promised to use the strategy during this year’s parliamentary elections, which will determine who will govern the State Duma in 2024. That’s when Putin’s current term expires and he is expected to do re – election last year thanks to constitutional reforms.
Analysts believe Navalny could influence this key vote, reason enough to want him out of the picture.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Analysts say the return of Navalny was a significant blow to Putin’s image and left the Kremlin in a dilemma.
Putin mostly worked from his home during the coronavirus outbreak, and the widespread perception that he had stayed away from the public does not agree well with Navalny’s daring return to the country where he was poisoned and arrested, Petrov said. of Chatham House said.
“It does not matter whether people support Navalny or not; “They see these two images, and Putin loses,” he said.
Commentators say there is no good choice for the Kremlin: putting Navalny in jail for long will make him a martyr and could lead to mass protests, while the parliamentary elections let him go.
So far, Navalny has only helped with the repression, “and even thinking loyalists are now, if not on his side, certainly not on the side of poisoners and persecutors,” Alexander Baunov of the Moscow Carnegie Center said in a recent article written.
Petrov said all eyes are on what is happening during Saturday’s planned protests. In 2013, Navalny was quickly released from prison after serving a five-year sentence for embezzlement after a large crowd gathered near the Kremlin.
Putin’s government has since become much tougher on differences of opinion, so it is unlikely that mass protests will result in Navalny’s immediate release, Petrov said. But the Kremlin is still afraid that a hard step could destabilize the situation, and the scale of the rallies could indicate how the public would react to Navalny being held captive for a long time.
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Associated Press journalist Kostya Manenkov contributed.