• Latest
  • Trending

Why Alexei Navalny Returned to Russia and Putin’s Clutches

January 18, 2021

Business booms for lawncare service started by three Saginaw boys | News

August 2, 2021

MSP seizes more than 1,200 marijuana plants from Carrolton Twp. home | News

August 2, 2021

The Hour Glass and Rolex: Partners in Time

August 2, 2021

Ocon claims maiden victory, Vettel disqualified

August 2, 2021

Midstate mom combats medical trauma in kids | 4 Your Community

August 1, 2021

Binance NFT celebrates Elephant Day with inaugural Jim Thompson NFTs

August 1, 2021

North Kansas City mask order starts Monday | Coronavirus

August 1, 2021

Father-son duo kayak the Chesapeake Bay in support of families in need

August 1, 2021

NWS confirms at least six tornadoes across Wisconsin from Wednesday night storms

July 31, 2021

Crete athlete struggles with post-COVID syndrome | Health and Fitness

July 31, 2021

In this rural Missouri county, the vaccination rate is low and opposition high | Coronavirus

July 31, 2021

The “Serendipity Sapphire” is the World’s Largest Sapphire Cluster

July 30, 2021
  • Home
  • General News
  • Tech
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
10Newz
  • Home
  • General News
    • All
    • Politics

    Trump’s Antifa Obsession Drew Law Enforcement Away From Far-Right

    Biden Executive Order Expands Obamacare to Uninsured in Pandemic

    Economy closes out 2020 with lower than expected 4% gain

    Cuba Fast Facts

    Expect “at least another 10 weeks” of vaccine shortages, says German Health Minister

    Comcast (CMCSA) Q4 2020 earnings

    Everything you need to know about how a Reddit group blew up GameStop's stock

    Could post-vaccine life mean we return to normal? Not just yet

    Dr. Fauci says Covid vaccines can be easily adapted to new variants, drugmakers working on boosters

    Poland abortion law: New restrictions go into effect, resulting in a near-total ban on terminations

    Trending Tags

    • Donald Trump
    • Future of News
    • Climate Change
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
    • Flat Earth
  • Tech

    NFKings Co-founder Matthew Lim on NFTs and Binance Investment

    Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson successfully rockets to outer space

    Twitter is a mess in India. Here’s how it got there

    Online retailers are using AI to convert more shoppers into buyers

    What Apple users should expect when using Microsoft 365 subscriptions

    Google Drive for Desktop app: 4 reasons why you should install it

    AI is trying to prevent online shoppers from ditching their carts

    Everything you need to know about Richard Branson going to space this weekend

    What Windows 11 means for Windows on Arm, and why it will bring more big name apps

    Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: ‘It’s time to recognize the right to repair’

    Trending Tags

    • Flat Earth
    • Sillicon Valley
    • Mr. Robot
    • MotoGP 2017
    • Golden Globes
    • Future of News
  • Entertainment
    • All
    • Gaming
    • Music
    • Sports

    The Inside Story of How Navalny Uncovered Putin’s Palace

    Ducks fly together in new trailer for Disney+ series ‘The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers’

    Sophie Is Gone, and It’s Okay to Cry

    Johnson & Johnson Publishes Promising COVID-19 Vaccine Data

    Hollywood pays tribute to Cicely Tyson

    Trump’s Antifa Obsession Drew Law Enforcement Away From Far-Right

    CDC Issues Mask Mandate for Public Transportation and Planes

    Cicely Tyson’s radiant power (opinion)

    Watch System of a Down’s New Video for ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’

    Police Tighten Congress Security in Era of Rising Threats

  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Fashion
    • Travel

    The Hour Glass and Rolex: Partners in Time

    Ocon claims maiden victory, Vettel disqualified

    Binance NFT celebrates Elephant Day with inaugural Jim Thompson NFTs

    The “Serendipity Sapphire” is the World’s Largest Sapphire Cluster

    Latest Saint Laurent Rive Droite Collection Features Jean Michel Basquiat

    NFKings Co-founder Matthew Lim on NFTs and Binance Investment

    Favourite Pieces from Watches & Wonders 2021: WOW Thailand Editor

    Sydney Leads The World With Its Placemaking Projects

    Sustainability, Market Demand and Unexpected Watches

    Tabayer Takes an Introspective Approach Ahead of the Collection Launch

    Trending Tags

    • Golden Globes
    • Mr. Robot
    • MotoGP 2017
    • Climate Change
    • Flat Earth
No Result
View All Result
News
No Result
View All Result
Home Entertainment

Why Alexei Navalny Returned to Russia and Putin’s Clutches

by admin
January 18, 2021
in Entertainment, Explainer, russia
0
491
SHARES
1.4k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

[ad_1]

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny flew straight into the hands of the Russian police on Jan. 17 when he returned from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from an assassination attempt that he and his supporters blamed on the Kremlin.

Police detained Navalny, Russia’s most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, at border control on Sunday evening at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. On Monday, he was tried in a local police precinct in the town of Khimki near Moscow, where the judge placed him under arrest for 30 days pending his next trial scheduled for Jan. 29.

Navalny stands accused of violating the terms of his probation for embezzlement, a 2014 case he says was fabricated. If the court agrees, he will be put behind bars for three and half years. Dozens of people gathered outside the precinct in the bitter cold, shouting “let him out!”.

Navalny, the head of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, has increasingly become a thorn in Putin’s side in recent years through his street protests, political campaigns, and exposés of government corruption which have helped unseat the president’s allies in local elections. He has been jailed more than ten times, spent hundreds of days in police custody since 2011, and was left in a coma after being poisoned by a powerful nerve agent last year.

The anti-corruption activist knew what awaited him on his return. At the end of December, his name was added to the Federal Wanted List over his alleged probation violations. On top of that, Russia’s investigative committee opened a new criminal case on Dec. 29, accusing him of the supposed misallocation of crowd-sourced funds at his Anti-Corruption foundation. If found guilty, he could be imprisoned for up to ten years. The question some are asking is why he would risk his freedom, and his life, to return?

Exile from Russia was not an option for Navalny

Navalny, for one, said he never doubted he would come back to his homeland. “The question ‘to return or not’ never stood before me,” he said in an Instagram post on Jan. 14. “Mainly because I never left. I ended up in Germany, having arrived in an intensive care box, for one reason: they tried to kill me.”

His close colleague, Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation living in exile in London, tells TIME that back in August he entertained the idea of discussing with Navalny how he could continue his fight from the safety of another country. “But when we started talking, I understood this was not an option. His fight is in Russia and he did not do anything wrong,” he says.

In August last year, Navalny was poisoned by Novichok, an internationally banned nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union and Russia, during a visit to the Siberian city of Tomsk. When he emerged from his medically induced coma in Berlin, having been airlifted there from Omsk, he immediately accused Putin of being behind the attack. Russia has consistently denied any involvement. The attack prompted the E.U. and U.K. to impose sanctions—asset freezes and visa bans—against some six Russian officials and drove relations between Russia and Europe to a new low.

A December report by the investigative news organization Bellingcat, in collaboration with independent media outlets, identified eight FSB operatives working for a clandestine unit, who according to the investigation, were behind the attack. By analysing cell phone and travel data, they found that these operatives had followed Navalny on more than 30 occasions since 2017. Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat says, “We found multiple instances where this FSB team seems to have been involved in the successful assassination of other figures, and failed assassinations of some others.”

A few days later, Navalny published a phone recording on YouTube of him duping an FSB officer allegedly involved in the assasination attempt, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, into divulging how he’d tried to poison him. During the 49-minute conversation, in which Navalny posed as an aide, Kudryavtsev revealed that operatives poisoned him via his underpants.

Putin, who never refers to Navalny by name, instead calling him the “Berlin patient” or a “blogger”, denied that the FSB was involved. “If they’d wanted to [poison him] then they probably would have finished the job,” he said during a press conference on Dec. 17.

High stakes for the Kremlin

Navalny’s return has put Putin in an awkward situation. “Every step taken by the Kremlin has the potential to make Navalny more well known,” says Ben Noble, a lecturer in Russian politics at the U.K’s University College London. It is clear from Navalny’s swift arrest that the authorities are trying to “take him out of public view as soon as possible”, says Noble. “They don’t want him to be greeted at home as a hero,” he adds. That could explain why the authorities diverted his plane last minute from Vnukovo airport, where journalists and hundreds of supporters gathered, to a different Moscow airport.

Navalny’s return has “particular high stakes” for the Kremlin due to the parliamentary elections scheduled for September, says Noble. Putin’s United Russia (UR) party faces a challenge like never before in maintaining a supermajority in parliament with support hovering at around 31%, according to the state-run pollster VCIOM, having hit a record low of 30.5% in August. “The Kremlin does not want Navalny and his team to make them any more difficult than they’re going to be, especially given the economic situation and uncertainty over the pandemic,” says Noble.

The elections will put to the test Navalny’s “smart voting” initiative, which directs voters to support candidates most likely to defeat the United Russia nominee. In the 2019 Moscow city elections—the first vote targeted by “smart voting”—the ruling party lost a third of its seats on the city council and saw its majority slashed to only five.

What also concerns the Kremlin, says Noble, is that Navalny is more recognisable than ever in Russia. In May 2013, the number of people who said they had never heard of him stood at 59%, according to the Levada Center, an independent polling agency in Moscow. By September last year, that had fallen to 18%. It also found that 20% of respondents approved of him, up from 6%, and people who disapprove of him increased to 50%, from 35%.

What will the world do now about Navalny?

Experts say Navalny is not going to walk free anytime soon. “Given the speed with which authorities have moved to take Navalny out of public view, they’re most likely going to lock him up,” says Noble.

Officials in the U.K. and E.U. have condemned the move, with some urging new sanctions against Russia for violating human rights. Joe Biden’s incoming national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called for Navalny’s immediate release and said the “perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable”.

But many doubt this will do much for Navalny. Higgins of Bellingcat says the reaction to Navalny’s arrest is “utterly toothless.” Navalny’s poisoning is just one event that Bellingcat say they have linked to the FSB, he says. “Assassinations, coup attempts, let alone attempts to interfere in democratic processes by Russia have been going on across the world. This is just what we know about. Russia doesn’t care about sanctions,” he says.

Ashurkov argues that sanctions are largely ineffective because they fail to target enough decision-makers in Putin’s regime, who stash their money in the West. A few days before Navalny boarded his flight, he and Ashurkov agreed on a list of eight individuals, who they think should be sanctioned. The list that Ashurkov published to his Facebook page on Jan. 18, includes Russia’s health minister and agriculture minister.

Even if he does remain behind bars, Navalny’s return and arrest may yet be a defining moment for Russia and governments around the world. “If the international community doesn’t do something that Russia cares about, Russia will realise that it can get away with whatever it wants,” says Higgins.

Get The Brief. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now.

Thank you!

For your security, we’ve sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don’t get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Contact us at [email protected].



[ad_2]

Source link

Share196Tweet123Share49
admin

admin

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

Rolex Testimonee Martin Scorsese on the methods of Cinematic Legends

November 23, 2020

Read Trent Reznors Rock Hall Induction Speech for Nine Inch Nails

November 7, 2020

Alex Trebek, Longtime ‘Jeopardy!’ Host, Dead at 80

November 8, 2020

Business booms for lawncare service started by three Saginaw boys | News

0

Judd Apatow, Wanda Sykes to Perform ‘Laughter in Lockdown’ Fundraiser

0

COVID-19 Has Killed More Than 100,000 Americans

0

Business booms for lawncare service started by three Saginaw boys | News

August 2, 2021

MSP seizes more than 1,200 marijuana plants from Carrolton Twp. home | News

August 2, 2021

The Hour Glass and Rolex: Partners in Time

August 2, 2021
10Newz

Copyright © 2017 10Newz.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • DMCA Notice
  • Disclosure Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Service

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • General News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • World
    • Science
  • Entertainment
    • Gaming
    • Music
    • Movie
    • Sports
  • Tech
    • Apps
    • Gear
    • Mobile
    • Startup
  • Lifestyle
    • Food
    • Fashion
    • Health
    • Travel

Copyright © 2017 10Newz.

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In