{"id":108289,"date":"2021-01-13T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=108289"},"modified":"2021-01-13T13:59:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T13:59:00","slug":"alexei-navalny-poisoned-putin-critic-to-return-to-russia-despite-risk-of-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/alexei-navalny-poisoned-putin-critic-to-return-to-russia-despite-risk-of-arrest\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexei Navalny: Poisoned Putin critic to return to Russia despite risk of arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"
Alexei Navalny – a long-time critic of Vladimir Putin – has said he will return home to Russia after recovering from being poisoned, despite the risk of arrest when he arrives.<\/p>\n
The opposition politician announced on Wednesday that he will fly back on Sunday from Germany where he has been recovering after coming into contact with a novichok nerve agent in August.<\/p>\n
Mr Navalny, 44, said on Instagram he had probably almost fully recovered and was always going to go back: “It was never a question of whether to return or not. Simply because I never left.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“I ended up in Germany after arriving in an intensive care box for one reason: They tried to kill me.”<\/p>\n
His vow comes a day after Russian authorities had asked for a suspended sentence still hanging over him to be converted into a real jail term, but he made it clear that he was not worried.<\/p>\n
“[President Vladimir Putin’s] servants are acting as usual by fabricating new criminal cases against me,” he added.<\/p>\n
“But I’m not interested in what they’re going to do to me. Russia is my country, Moscow is my city and I miss it,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
Russia<\/strong> has consistently denied involvement in the poisoning of Mr Navalny<\/strong> at a Russian airport in August and has said it has seen no evidence that he was poisoned.<\/p>\n Mr Navalny was taken critically ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After making a forced landing in Omsk, he was later flown to Germany for treatment.<\/p>\n German authorities later announced that Mr Navalny had been poisoned with a novichok<\/strong> nerve agent – the same kind of substance used against Sergei and Yulia Skripal<\/strong>, a former Russian double agent and his daughter, in a 2018 poisoning in Salisbury.<\/p>\n An investigation<\/strong> by journalists at Bellingcat and The Insider found “voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning”.<\/p>\n Its report said the attack “was mandated at the highest echelons of the Kremlin<\/strong>“, a view supported by Germany and other Western nations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The opposition politician, investigators claimed, had been followed by a hit squad of state security agents for the best part of four years.<\/p>\n In a remarkable follow-up to that report, Mr Navalny himself tricked one of his would-be assassins<\/strong> into an apparent confession, teasing stunning details of the operation during a hoax phone call.<\/p>\n Russia’s Federal Prison Service (FSIN) last month ordered Mr Navalny to immediately fly back, and to report at a Moscow office or be jailed if he failed to return in time.<\/p>\n He and his allies have accused Russian authorities of trying to scare him from returning ahead of parliamentary elections due to be held in September.<\/p>\n The Kremlin has said Mr Navalny is free to return to Russia at any time like any other Russian citizen.<\/p>\n