Russian opposition leader Navalny, who was saved from being poisoned, announced that he will return to his home country this Sunday. Is he not afraid of being murdered again?
But Russian prison authorities announced Thursday that Navalny will be arrested immediately if he enters Russia, where he is accused of violating a previously imposed probationary sentence of release from prison, which Navalny has revealed is nothing more than a Kremlin ploy to intimidate him from returning to the country.
On Wednesday, Navalny announced to the media that he will return to Russia this Sunday. He knows full well that Russian authorities are constantly threatening to put him back in prison if he returns. However, Navalny believes that these are means for the Russian authorities to prevent him from going back, “They will do anything to wipe me off the Russian landscape, and for Putin, his greatest hope, is that I do not return.”
French newspaper Le Monde commented that Navalny’s return to Russia, one is a challenge to Putin, but a lesson to the EU. Another Russian opposition figure, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, understands what Naval’s return means, tweeting on the 13th to praise Navalny’s decision: “Great, but dangerous!” Khodorkovsky, who was imprisoned in a Russian prison for a decade in order to open Russia’s closed political system and was finally released in 2013 on the condition that he agreed to go into exile, now lives in the European Union with all ties to his homeland cut off.
This is exactly the fate Navalny was trying to avoid. Having survived a drug murder, enemy number one of the Russian polity, he has been treated in Berlin for five months. After escaping death, Navalny is ready to return home to fight, and on Jan. 17, he returned on a cheap flight to confront Putin’s regime on Pobeda, which means “victory” in Russian, adding a new layer to his challenge to Putin. Navalny called out to his supporters on social networks, “We’ll meet in Russia!”
What happens after the flight he took into Russia Sunday night, after the plane stops and lands at Moscow airport? Navalny will likely return home, accompanied by his wife, and a large crowd of journalists may appear around him, but Russian authorities may arrest him. In order to block the return to Russia of the very powerful opposition leader, the Russian authorities have threatened to annul the suspended sentence against him, under the pretext that he did not report to the police station on December 30, as required.
Le Monde commented that putting Navalny in jail again is actually a way of acknowledging that the opposition leader has become a threat to Putin, whose regime has tried to destroy him, but which President Putin has denied, more or less shamelessly, claiming that if Russian intelligence agencies really wanted to assassinate Navalny, they would have succeeded long ago. According to journalists from the investigative news site Bellingcat, the details of the involvement of Russian agents and chemical weapons experts in the murder of Navalny have come to light. Navalny himself was involved in the investigation, and he managed to record a telephone conversation with one of the agents involved in the murder in December, who believed that his interlocutor was his colleague, giving details of how he organized Navalny’s murder, a matter that humiliated the authorities.
According to Le Monde, Navalny is not afraid to sacrifice his life and freedom, presenting a real challenge to Putin’s regime, which is due to hold legislative elections within the year. Returning to Russia, Navalny has shown no fear. Since he cannot legally be a rotating ruling opposition, he is ready to resume his role of exposing official corruption, and by doing so, he will make all the limelight refocus on the flaws and darkness of Putin’s regime: what Putin is doing now is to make all efforts to amend the constitution so that he can stay in power until 2036, and for that reason, Putin, more than ever, needs to shut down the political debate. more than ever, he needs to plug the political debate.
Navalny’s return to Russia will also be a challenge to the EU and to the Biden administration, which is about to take office. The EU has received Navalny, but it has been unable to do anything overall, except to adopt some sanctions against Russia. This is true not only for Russia, but also for Belarus. In Belarus, the crackdown on the opposition continues.
In Le Monde’s opinion, the least the EU can do is, on the one hand, not to have any concessions against Putin and, on the other hand, to help the local civil society to get more information about the outside world and try to organize more trainings to push the Russian society to be more open.
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