Poisoned Kremlin critic detained after Moscow arrival
MOSCOW — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested Sunday at a Moscow airport as he tried to enter the country from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
Navalny’s detention at passport control in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport was widely expected because Russia’s prisons service said he had violated parole terms from a suspended sentence on a 2014 embezzlement conviction.
The prisons service said he would be held in custody until a court rules on his case. No date for a court appearance was immediately announced. The service earlier said it would seek to have Navalny serve his 3½-year sentence behind bars.
Navalny, 44, who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent and determined foe, brushed off concerns about arrest as he boarded the plane in Berlin.
“It’s impossible. I’m an innocent man,” he said.
Navalny decided to leave Berlin of his own free will.
President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in a tweet, “Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable.”
The outgoing U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said the U.S. “strongly condemns” the decision to arrest Navalny and called his detention “the latest in a series of attempts to silence Navalny and other opposition figures and independent voices who are critical of Russian authorities.”