Name? Alexei Navalny
Westphalian identity? Russian
Age? 44
Why is he in the news? Five months ago, Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent attack on a domestic flight in Russia; allegedly by the Russian secret service. Yesterday he returned from medical treatment in Germany just to be arrested at border control in Moscow for violating the terms of his suspended sentence for embezzlement.
Why do we care? Navalny’s return home was a direct challenge to President Putin and presented him with a dilemma: Either arrest him and turn him into a political martyr, or let him go and wander around as a vocal opposition with international popularity. As we saw yesterday, Putin opted to arrest.
Why should you care? This arrest sparked international (Western) reactions and these reactions roughly cover why you should care. At the same time, the reactions are purely verbal expressions of outrage. Neither the US nor the EU care enough to at least threaten Putin with sanctions. So on our How much should you care scale, this only gets a 3/10.
Who else cares? Vladimir Putin. As previously mentioned, Navalny is a bit of a pickle for Putin. Who else has a motive and the capacities to execute a Novichok (a poison used primarily by Russian intelligence) attack on a Russian citizen…? At the same time, Putin said at a press conference in December that if Russia wanted to kill Navalny, they would have finished the job.
Any further comments? So why did Navalny return to Russia where he surely would be jailed? He could have stayed in Germany and continued his political fight from abroad like the opposition in Belarus. According to him, he missed home and was not afraid but happy to return home. At border control, he even told the officers “You must have been waiting for me for a long time!” Let’s hope he woke up with a smile still this morning.
