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Thread: Anti- Putin Politician Alexei Navalny (44) has been reported poisoned in Russia

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    Anti- Putin Politician Alexei Navalny (44) has been reported poisoned in Russia

    https://www.foxla.com/news/russia-op...eged-poisoning

    NEW YORK - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after falling ill from suspected poisoning that his allies believe is linked to his political activity.

    The 44-year-old foe of Russia's President Vladimir Putin felt unwell on a flight back to Moscow from Tomsk, a city in Siberia, and was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter.

    ?He is in a coma in grave condition,? she said on Twitter.

    She also told the Echo Moskvy radio station that during the flight Navalny was sweating and asked her to talk to him so that he could ?focus on a sound of a voice." He then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness.

    Yarmysh said the politician must have consumed something from tea he drank at an airport cafe before boarding the plane early Thursday.

    ?Doctors are saying the toxin was absorbed quicker with hot liquid,? she tweeted, adding that Navalny?s team called police to the hospital.

    Anatoliy Kalinichenko, deputy chief doctor of the Omsk hospital where the politician is being treated, told reporters that Navalny was in grave, yet stable condition. Kalinichenko said doctors are considering a variety of diagnosis, including poisoning, but refused to give details, citing a law preventing doctors from disclosing confidential patient information.

    State news agency Tass reported that police were not considering deliberate poisoning, citing an anonymous source in law enforcement who said ?it is not unlikely that he drank or consumed something yesterday himself.?

    Yarmysh on Twitter bristled at that suggestion: ?Of course. It's just the tea was bad. This is what the state propaganda is going to do now ? yell that there was no deliberate poisoning, he (did something) accidentally, he (did something) himself.?

    Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning. Doctors then said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day.

    Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing graft among government officials, including some at the highest level. Last month, he had to shut the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.

    Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Navalny last week of organizing unprecedented mass protests against his re-election that have rocked Russia's ex-Soviet neighbor since Aug. 9. He did not, however, provide any evidence and that claim was one of many blaming foreign forces for the unrest.

    Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging one eye.

    The most prominent member of Russia's opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running.

    He set up a network of campaign offices across Russia and has since been putting forward opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of Russia's ruling party, United Russia. One of his associates in Khabarovsk, a city in Russia's Far East that has been engulfed in mass protests against the arrest of the region's governor, was detained just last week after calling for a strike at a rally.

    In the interview with Echo Moskvy, Yarmysh said she believed the suspected poisoning was connected to this year's regional election campaign

    Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer with Navalny's foundation, said the team is requesting Russia's Investigative Committee open a criminal probe.

    ?There is no doubt that Navalny was poisoned because of his political stance and activity,? Gimadi said in a tweet on Thursday.

    Navalny is not the first opposition figure to come down with a mysterious poisoning. In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Russia's protest group Pussy Riot, ended up in an intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning and had to be flown to Berlin for treatment. Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was hospitalized with poisoning symptoms twice ? in 2015 and 2017. Both said they believed they were poisoned for their political activity.
    Here is the fallout from the poisoning but expect crazy Putin Conspiracies to be at play here.

  2. #2
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    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...1c4_story.html

    Alexei Navalny holds the audacious belief that Russians should be able to choose their leaders in free, fair and competitive elections. That’s why he tried to run for president in 2018, but was denied a place on the ballot.

    He believes that government officials should not use their power for personal enrichment. That’s why he operates one of the most important investigative media outlets in Russia.

    He champions the idea that Russians should not be arrested unjustly. That’s why he organizes protests and gets arrested himself.

    Navalny threatens autocracy in Russia. That’s why, in a most cruel and sinister act, the authorities sentenced his brother to three years in jail.

    And that may be why Navalny has now, it would seem, been attacked again — apparently poisoned. He is lying unconscious, connected to a ventilator in an intensive care unit in a Siberian hospital.

    Analysts in Russia and the West spend too much time scrutinizing Navalny’s policy positions: Is he too nationalist? Is he not liberal enough? Is he too leftist? Those are questions for Russian voters to decide — but right now they can’t. To give them such a chance is what Navalny is fighting for.

    Navalny’s heroic struggle is no different from what Gandhi, King, Mandela and Havel fought for. While Navalny has not succeeded yet, there should be no doubt that his cause is good and just.

    Vladimir Putin is evil. Over the past 20 years, Russia’s current leader has constructed a ruthless dictatorship. He has shut down independent media and civil society organizations, and he has arrested critics and business leaders who dare to challenge his unconstrained powers. Abroad, Putin has annexed Ukrainian territory, sent troops to Syria to prop up one the most brutal dictators of our time, violated American sovereignty in 2016 to try to influence the outcome of our presidential election, and is interfering again in our election now. At home and abroad, Putin’s regime and its proxies have repeatedly killed, or tried to kill, its critics. Navalny may have just become his latest victim.

    I use the verb “may” because, of course, we do not know all the details. We probably never will. We still don’t know all the facts about who killed Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, or who twice poisoned democratic defender Vladimir Kara-Murza, or the full story behind other assassinated Russian heroes who also fought against evil.

    Putin has a talent for deniability. Yet even if the ex-KGB officer who now runs Russia didn’t directly order a hit on Navalny, he is still to blame. It is Putin who has empowered intelligence officers and created permissive conditions for vigilantes.

    In an earlier period in American history, our government and people would have stood united on the side of good in this fight against evil. There was no partisan divide when it came to standing up for heroes and standing against villains.

    Yes, U.S. presidents sometimes had to negotiate with dictators to advance American national interests. And yes, there have often been cases in which we failed to defend those who were doing the right thing. But even when we were not doing enough to embrace good and stand up to evil, previous U.S. presidents knew they were in the wrong.

    Moreover, when negotiating with autocrats, most U.S. presidents did not check their values at the door. When visiting Moscow for the first time in 1988, President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but also hosted a lunch with dissidents, people like Navalny. President George W. Bush did the same when attending a meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg in 2006. My old boss, President Barack Obama, met with Russian civil society and opposition leaders on his first visit to Moscow in 2009 – and did so again on his last visit to Russia in 2013.

    President Trump, by contrast, has enthusiastically embraced Putin and excused his villainous ways. To the best of my knowledge, Trump has never praised, let alone met with, activists or opposition leaders in Russia, Ukraine or Belarus. On hearing of Navalny’s hospitalization, all Trump could muster Thursday was “We haven’t seen it yet, we’re looking at it, and Mike [Pompeo]’s going to be reporting to me soon.” Not a word of concern, let alone outrage. In the clear divide between good and evil in Russia, Trump is on the wrong side.

    American indifference to evil has consequences. It emboldens the villains and weakens the heroes. But sometimes presidents must say and do things — for example, to impose sanctions on Alexander Lukashenko for stealing an election in Belarus, to criticize Putin for aiding the Taliban, to signal solidarity with Navalny and offer assistance as European leaders have — not because these actions might be effective, but because they are right. In a world divided by good and evil, it’s time for America to get back on the right side.

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    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53865811

    Russian doctors treating Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who fell into a coma after being taken ill on a plane, have changed their minds and agreed to let him be flown to Germany.

    The doctors, in the Siberian city of Omsk, had earlier insisted he was too ill to be moved.

    His supporters suspect he drank poisoned tea, and accuse authorities of trying to cover up a crime.

    A medically equipped plane is waiting to take him to Germany for treatment.

    Mr Navalny's team said earlier it was "deadly" for him to remain in the hospital and his wife, Yulia, appealed in a letter to the Kremlin to give permission for him to flown abroad.

    Eventually, German medics were allowed to see him and said they were "able and willing" to fly him to Berlin. Mr Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said it was a pity doctors had taken so long to approve his flight as the plane and the right documents had been ready since Friday morning.

    Reports say he could leave within hours, but Mr Navalny's spokeswoman said his departure would not happen for at least seven hours - which would be early on Saturday morning in the Siberian city.

    What the doctors said
    Mr Navalny remains in a coma and hospital head doctor Alexander Murakhovsky warned late on Friday they did not recommend flying,"but his wife insists on her husband being transferred to a German clinic".

    "The patient's condition is stable," deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

    "As we're in possession of a request from relatives to permit him to be transported somewhere, we have now taken the decision that we do not object to his transfer to another in-patient facility."

    Doctors said earlier that no poison had been found in his body, suggesting his condition might be the result of a "metabolic disorder" caused by low blood sugar.

    Health officials then indicated that traces of an industrial chemical had been found on his skin and hair. The local interior ministry told the Rapsi legal news agency that the chemical was usually included in polymers to improve their elasticity, but its concentration was impossible to establish.

    Russia's vociferous Putin critic
    The prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin has consistently exposed official corruption in Russia. He has served multiple jail terms.

    His team suspects a poisonous substance was put in his tea at an airport cafe in the city of Tomsk as he prepared to fly to Moscow.

    Foreign leaders including Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Emmanuel Macron have expressed concern for Mr Navalny. In the US, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has described the incident as "unacceptable" and vowed that, if elected, he would "stand up to autocrats like Putin".

    Who will take him to Germany?
    The Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation organised an air ambulance to pick up Mr Navalny and bring him back to Berlin, where it said the Charit? hospital was ready to treat him.

    "They can fly him, we are willing," it told the BBC. "The circumstances and equipment make it possible."

    At a news conference in Berlin, Mr Navalny's aide Leonid Volkov said at first doctors at the hospital had been helping to facilitate his transfer but abruptly stopped doing so.

    "[It was] like something was switched off - like medicine mode off, cover-up operation mode on - and the doctors refused to co-operate any more, refused to give any information even to Alexei's wife," he said.

    "The doctors who were helping to do the paperwork to make the transportation of Alexei to Charit? possible started to say that he's not any more transportable, he's not any more stable, contradicting themselves."

    The Cinema for Peace Foundation was founded by activist and filmmaker Jaka Bizilj. In 2018, it arranged for the treatment of Pyotr Verzilov - an activist with Russian protest group Pussy Riot - who had symptoms of poisoning.

    Mr Verzilov's ex-wife, activist Nadya Tolokonnikova, told BBC News that Mr Navalny's condition resembles the "poisoning" of her ex-husband.

    "What German doctors told me after not finding poison in my ex-husband's blood is that the poison disappears in three days. So the Russian doctors only let him go when they were sure there was no traces of poison left," she explained.

    She also expressed surprise about what has happened to Mr Navalny: "I thought Alexei was so powerful as a political figure that Mr Putin would not interfere."

    Mr Navalny's wife Yulia wrote to President Putin asking him to allow her husband to be moved. She feared the Russian authorities were stalling so that evidence of any chemical substance would be lost.

    Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that the Kremlin would help move Mr Navalny abroad if necessary and wished him a "speedy recovery". On Friday he said it was purely a medical decision.

    Timeline: Navalny targeted
    April 2017: He was taken to hospital after an antiseptic green dye was splashed on his face in Moscow. It was the second time he was targeted with zelyonka ("brilliant green" in English) that year. "It looks funny but it hurts like hell," he tweeted following the attack.

    July 2019: He was sentenced to 30 days in prison after calling for unauthorised protests. He fell ill in jail and doctors said he had suffered an acute allergic reaction, diagnosing him with "contact dermatitis". His own doctor suggested he might have been exposed to "some toxic agent" and Mr Navalny said he thought he might have been poisoned.

    December 2019: Russian security forces raided the offices of his Anti-Corruption Foundation, taking laptops and other equipment. CCTV footage showed officials using power tools to get through the door. Earlier that year, his organisation was declared a "foreign agent".


    Media captionPower tools are used to raid Navalny's foundation in December 2019
    How did he end up in hospital?
    When Mr Navalny fell ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow his plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. A photograph on social media purported to show him drinking from a cup at a Tomsk airport cafe before the flight.

    Image copyrightEPA
    Image caption
    A man in Moscow watches social media footage of Mr Navalny being stretchered to an ambulance
    Disturbing video appeared to show a stricken Mr Navalny howling in agony on the flight. Passenger Pavel Lebedev said he heard the activist "screaming in pain".

    Further footage showed him being taken on a stretcher to an ambulance on the airport runway at Omsk.

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    The Berlin hospital treating the seriously ill Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, says he appears to have been poisoned.

    The Charit? hospital released a statement saying "clinical evidence suggests an intoxication through a substance belonging to the group of cholinesterase inhibitors".

    But doctors who treated him in Russia say the substance was not present.

    Mr Navalny fell ill on an internal flight in Russia on Thursday.

    Video appeared to show Mr Navalny, a dogged critic of the Kremlin, writhing in agony on the flight from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow.

    His supporters suspect poison was placed in a cup of tea he drank at the airport in Tomsk.

    Alexei Navalny: Russia's vociferous Putin critic
    Mr Navalny's flight made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was first treated.

    In their latest statement released after that of the German medical team, the Omsk doctors say tests showed no sign of cholinesterase inhibitors in his body. Speaking last week, the same team suggested his illness was caused by a metabolic disorder triggered by low blood sugar.

    On Friday, they at first said he was too ill to be moved but then allowed him to board a medical evacuation flight, which landed in Berlin on Saturday morning.

    What did doctors in Germany say?
    His condition was "serious but not life-threatening" the statement said.

    "The exact substance is not yet known," the hospital said. "Widespread analysis has begun. The effect of the poison - i.e. the inhibition of cholinesterase in the organism - has been proven several times and in independent laboratories."

    The clinical outcome remained unclear, the statement said, and the medical team warned of possible effects on the nervous system.

    The opposition leader is in intensive care and is still in an artificial coma.

    Mr Navalny is being given an antidote, atropine, the same drug used in the case of ex-KGB agent Sergei Skripal by UK doctors after his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018.

    What are cholinesterase inhibitors?
    They are a group of chemicals, some of which can be used to treat diseases, such as Alzheimer's. When used in nerve agents and pesticides they can be harmful to humans.

    "Cholinesterase inhibitors block a crucial enzyme which regulates messages from nerves to muscles," says Alastair Hay, Professor (Emeritus) of Environmental Toxicology at Leeds University.

    "The enzyme is called acetylcholinesterase. Inhibition of the enzyme interferes with nerve to muscle messaging and muscles are no longer able to contract and relax. They go into a sort of spasm.

    "All muscles are affected with the most crucial being those which affect breathing. As breathing is inhibited individuals may become unconscious."

    What do Mr Navalny's supporters think?
    They have been blaming the Kremlin.

    Doctors in Omsk had at first been co-operative in helping to transfer Mr Navalny abroad for treatment, they said, but had then backtracked before he was finally allowed to leave.

    His wife, Yulia, said she feared the Russian authorities were trying to wait for evidence of any chemical substance to disappear before sending him abroad.

    But President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday that the Kremlin would help move Mr Navalny abroad if necessary, describing it as a purely medical decision.

    Alexander Murakhovsky, the chief doctor at the Omsk hospital said: "There was no influence on the treatment of the patient a priori and there couldn't have been any."

    Mr Navalny, 44, is a prominent critic of Mr Putin and has exposed official corruption in Russia. He has served multiple jail terms for organising rallies.

    The NGO which arranged his flight to Berlin, the Cinema for Peace, said Mr Navalny would probably be out of action for one or two months.

    What is being said outside Russia?
    In her latest comments, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for those behind any poisoning to be identified and held accountable.

    In a joint statement with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, she said: "In view of Mr Navalny's prominent role in the political opposition in Russia, the authorities there are now urgently called upon to investigate this act thoroughly, and to do so with full transparency."

    The UK called on Saturday for a "full and transparent" investigation.

    And US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden vowed over the weekend that, if elected, he would "stand up to autocrats like Putin".

    Timeline: Navalny targeted
    April 2017: He was taken to hospital after an antiseptic green dye was splashed on his face in Moscow. It was the second time he was targeted with zelyonka ("brilliant green" in English) that year. "It looks funny but it hurts like hell," he tweeted following the attack.

    July 2019: He was sentenced to 30 days in prison after calling for unauthorised protests. He fell ill in jail and doctors said he had suffered an acute allergic reaction, diagnosing him with "contact dermatitis". His own doctor suggested he might have been exposed to "some toxic agent" and Mr Navalny said he thought he might have been poisoned.

    December 2019: Russian security forces raided the offices of his Anti-Corruption Foundation, taking laptops and other equipment. CCTV footage showed officials using power tools to get through the door. Earlier that year, his organisation was declared a "foreign agent".
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53892900




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    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54010741

    A top ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the EU risks becoming irrelevant if it fails to act against Russia over the poisoning of opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
    Norbert R?ttgen said a major gas deal with Russia must now be reconsidered.
    The Russian government has been widely condemned after Germany confirmed on Wednesday that Mr Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.
    He is gravely ill in intensive care in Berlin's Charit? hospital.
    Mr Navalny was flown to the German capital after collapsing in pain on a flight in Siberia on 20 August. His supporters believe poison was put in his tea at Tomsk airport.
    Mr R?ttgen, chair of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, demanded a tough EU response in the Navalny case. Novichok is an extremely toxic, military-grade weapon that experts say must have come from a state facility.
    "Now, again, we are brutally confronted with the reality of the Putin regime, which treats people with contempt," Mr R?ttgen told German public broadcaster ARD.
    He noted that President Vladimir Putin had projected Russian power in Syria, Libya and Belarus, and said: "The question is, are the Europeans always going to end up doing nothing? If so, then we'll become irrelevant, we won't be taken seriously."

    Members of the Nato defence alliance will discuss the poisoning at a special meeting on Friday.
    Mrs Merkel earlier said Mr Navalny was a victim of attempted murder and the world would look to Russia for answers.
    She said there would be an "appropriate joint response" by the EU and Nato, describing the poisoning of Mr Navalny as "an attack on the fundamental values and basic rights to which we are committed".
    The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said poisoning someone with a nerve agent "is considered a use of chemical weapons". It called the alleged attack "a matter of grave concern" and pledged to help any state that asks for its help.
    The Kremlin has not accepted the diagnosis in Germany, saying it has not seen German data on Mr Navalny's condition.
    "There are no grounds to accuse the Russian state," Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Putin, told reporters, adding that Germany and other EU nations should not "hurry with their assessments".
    Doubts over Russian gas deal
    Mr R?ttgen warned that Germany would risk becoming dependent on Russia by completing Nord Stream 2, a controversial 1,225km (760-mile) gas pipeline owned by Russia's Gazprom.
    He also warned that doing so would encourage Mr Putin to ignore Western protestations over the Navalny case and other attacks on his political opponents. Mr R?ttgen is a candidate to succeed Mrs Merkel as chancellor next year.
    On Tuesday Mrs Merkel reiterated her wish to see Nord Stream 2 completed.

    President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on any firm that helps Gazprom to complete the project.
    However, his critics are asking why he has not commented on the targeting of Mr Navalny.
    His rival in the presidential race, Joe Biden, accused the Kremlin of "an outrageous and brazen attempt on Mr Navalny's life".
    "Donald Trump has refused to confront Putin, calling him a 'terrific person'," Mr Biden said.

    Mr Navalny was put into a medically induced coma after falling ill. His team says he was poisoned on President Putin's orders. The Kremlin has dismissed the allegation.

    A team of German specialists has found "unequivocal proof" that a Novichok nerve agent was used.
    The Charit? hospital says it expects Mr Navalny's recovery to take a long time and cannot rule out long-term after-effects, but the agent's blockage of his cholinesterase enzyme is declining.
    On Wednesday the Kremlin spokesman called on Germany for a full exchange of information and foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova complained the Novichok allegations were not backed up by evidence.
    International outrage
    Novichok has been in the news before. It was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018. While they survived, a British woman later died in hospital. The UK accused Russia's military intelligence of carrying out that attack.
    In a co-ordinated move, 20 countries expelled more than 100 Russian diplomats and spies.
    UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the latest attack as "outrageous". "The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny - we will work with international partners to ensure justice is done," he tweeted.
    The EU has demanded a "transparent" investigation by the Russian government. "Those responsible must be brought to justice," a statement read.
    The US National Security Council (NSC) said the suspected poisoning was "completely reprehensible".
    "We will work with allies and the international community to hold those in Russia accountable, wherever the evidence leads, and restrict funds for their malign activities," an NSC spokesman said.

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    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54010741

    Alexei Navalny is a name President Putin refuses to say out loud.
    It's an attempt to diminish his political significance, but the endless prosecutions, police detentions and giant fines Mr Navalny has faced over the years tell a different story about his impact.
    He's certainly annoyed a lot of people, from those targeted by his anti-corruption investigations to Vladimir Putin himself. So it is possible someone wanted to resolve the "Navalny problem" for good.
    The timing is largely irrelevant. Why now? Well, why not. But if whoever did this hoped to contain the fallout - a mysterious collapse, never explained by Russian doctors - the fact Navalny's team got him to Germany has blown that calculation.
    The "collapse" is now a deliberate attack, and a major international scandal. The Kremlin response so far is familiar: deny, obfuscate, demand proof. Mr Putin's spokesman has even hinted that if Mr Navalny had been poisoned, then it must have happened in Germany because doctors here detected nothing suspicious.
    Expect to hear a lot more along those lines in the days to come.

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    Quote Originally Posted by raisedbywolves View Post
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/polit...ing/index.html

    Trump declines to condemn Russia over Navalny poisoning



    Of course he did...he's probably super sad that he hasn't been able to poison anyone yet like his hero Putin.
    Not Shocking at this point if Trump and his family divested from Trump inc we would not be in this situation. Putin would have been out of office by now.

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    Wow. Russia doesn't play. I see why they scare Trump.

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    https://www.rappler.com/world/europe...e-navalny-ally

    Really Putin!

    Investigators launches a probe into Lyubov Sobol for trespassing 'with the use of violence or a threat to use it' after she rang the doorbell of the alleged Federal Security Service agent



    Russian authorities on Friday, December 25, opened a criminal probe into an ally of opposition leader Alexei Navalny after raiding her flat, alleging she threatened a man Navalny claimed took part in his poisoning.

    Ivan Zhdanov, head of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund, said investigators launched a probe into Lyubov Sobol for trespassing "with the use of violence or a threat to use it" after Sobol rang the doorbell of the alleged Federal Security Service (FSB) agent.

    On Monday, Navalny said he had tricked an alleged chemical weapons expert with the FSB named Konstantin Kudryavtsev into admitting that the domestic intelligence agency had sought to kill him this summer by placing poison in his underwear.

    Later Monday, Sobol went to the Moscow apartment where a joint media report led by the Bellingcat investigative website last week said Kudryavtsev lives.

    She was detained by police at the scene and questioned for hours.

    On Friday, police took the 33-year-old opposition activist in for questioning after conducting a raid on her Moscow apartment at around 7:00 am (0400 GMT) and confiscated her tech devices, the Anti-Corruption Fund wrote on Twitter.

    Sobol's young daughter and husband were allowed to leave the flat, said a message posted on Sobol's Twitter feed.



    Speaking to Agence France-Presse on Monday, the opposition activist had expressed concern about a possible criminal case against her.

    Sobol, a lawyer by training, has announced plans to run in parliamentary elections next year.

    Western governments say Navalny, 44, was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent in a case that has further dented Moscow's relations with leading European countries and sparked mutual sanctions.

    The FSB has said Navalny's call with Kudryavtsev was "fake" but has not denied that he works for the agency.

    The Kremlin has admitted that security agents have tailed Navalny but denied any attempts to poison him. – Rappler.com

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    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...ccb_story.html


    MOSCOW — On his return to Russia Sunday, five months after he left in a coma from a near-fatal poisoning, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny made it as far as border control.

    Before Navalny’s passport could even be stamped, police officers at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Alexander S. Pushkin International Airport surrounded and detained him. He gave his wife a hug and a kiss goodbye before being led to a private room.

    The 44-year-old opposition leader’s arrest was expected, but he chose to fly to Russia anyway. Before his arrival, Russian authorities said he was on a wanted list for allegedly violating the terms of his suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny and the European Court of Human Rights have called that case a political prosecution.

    But the move to jail him could have far-reaching consequences for the government of President Vladimir Putin. Navalny says Putin ordered Russian state security agents to poison him with a nerve agent during a trip to Siberia in August. The Kremlin has denied the accusation.

    Navalny’s team said Sunday that the chaos surrounding his return, including the diversion of his flight to Sheremetyevo after supporters gathered at the Moscow airport where he was scheduled to land, show just how serious a threat Putin considers Navalny.

    His arrest is expected to trigger protests by his supporters, and a response from Western governments, perhaps in the form of more sanctions, is also possible.

    “Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” Jake Sullivan, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for national security adviser, tweeted Sunday. “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices heard.”

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a statement on Sunday, condemned Navalny’s arrest, saying that the United States is concerned about the latest attempt to silence him and demanding his immediate release. “Confident political figures do not fear competing voices, nor commit violence against or wrongfully detain political opponents,” he said.

    Amnesty International declared Navalny a “prisoner of conscience” Sunday night.

    Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said Navalny would be in police custody “until a court ruling.” It’s unclear when his case will be heard. Hours after his detention, his spokeswoman tweeted that his exact whereabouts were not known.
    Navalny, standing before a backdrop of the Kremlin at the Sheremetyevo airport before he went to border control, said Sunday was his “best day in the past five months.”

    “This is my home,” he said. “I came here, and everybody is asking, ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ No, I am not afraid.”

    Navalny arrived from Berlin, where he was treated for his poisoning, including more than two weeks in a medically induced coma. He was escorted onto the flight by German security officials for his protection: Two black Audis with tinted windows surrounded by police cars could be seen on the tarmac. Airport officials warned watching journalists they weren’t allowed to take pictures.

    As Navalny made his way to his seat in the 13th row, reporters on the plane lobbed questions at him. He encouraged them to take their seats and fasten their seat belts so the flight could take off on time.

    Asked what he expected in Moscow, Navalny replied with his trademark humor: Subzero temperatures, he said, and a warm welcome. He took a selfie with the flight attendants and watched the Cartoon Network series “Rick and Morty” during the flight.

    At Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport, where Navalny was scheduled to arrive, riot police were deployed to disperse a gathering crowd. More than 50 people were detained, according to the monitoring group OVD-Info.

    A large group at the airport said they were waiting for pop star Olga Buzova. Navalny’s team called it a Kremlin-backed effort to compete with his supporters.

    As Navalny’s flight neared Vnukovo, flight radar showed it turning away, and its arrival was pushed back. Then the arrivals board showed that the plane had been diverted to Sheremetyevo.

    On the plane, the captain announced that “a technical issue” caused the change. Other flights were diverted, too, and Navalny later apologized to affected passengers.

    “I didn’t believe it until the last minute,” Navalny said on the plane. “There are several planes in the air above Vnukovo Airport right now, and they’re keep passengers in the air because they are afraid.”

    At the news, some of the crowd started to leave Vnukovo. “I think if we all head to Sheremetyevo now, they’ll turn the plane back around to Vnukovo,” said Danila Buzanov, 25.

    Buzanov called Navalny a Nelson Mandela-like figure. He said his arrest would only make things worse for the Kremlin. Navalny’s return, he said, “is such a brave thing to do, and it’s such a message for people of how to not be afraid and fight until the end.”

    Tatiana Stanovaya, head of political analysis firm R. Politik, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Navalny’s arrest will trigger protests that would test “how far [Russian security services] and the most repressive apparatus of the state can go.”

    Despite the late change in airport, Navalny’s supporters showed up at Sheremetyevo, and chanted the name of Navalny’s wife, Yulia, as she exited the border control area.

    In Berlin earlier Sunday, Ekaterina Raykova-Merz and Andreas Merz-Raykov waited to greet Navalny before his departure, holding up a sign that read, “The time of dictators has come to an end. Putin is afraid of Navalny.”

    German doctors have said Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent similar to the Soviet-era Novichok, which was used to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Western intelligence blamed Russian agents for that poisoning.

    The investigative website Bellingcat reported last month that telecommunications and travel data show that eight Russian state security agents were in the vicinity when Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk.

    The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny’s poisoning and has rebuffed Western calls for an investigation.
    Putin, during a December news conference, seemed to confirm that Navalny was being watched, but denied that Moscow was responsible for his poisoning. Without referring to Navalny by name, Putin laughed and asked: “Who needs him anyway? If we had really wanted, we’d have finished the job.”

    Andrei Kolesnikov, chairman of the Russian Domestic Politics Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, tweeted that “Navalny’s reception by the authorities at the airport is the best evidence of how afraid they are of him.”

    “They themselves are inflating the importance of Navalny,” Kolesnikov said. “This disavows Putin’s ironic question: ‘Who needs him?’ ”

    But the government’s messaging on Navalny — alleging without evidence that he’s working with the CIA — has had some success in shaping Russian public opinion.

    Forty-nine percent of Russians polled by the independent Levada Center in late December said the poisoning was either staged or “a provocation of Western special services.” Just 15 percent said it was an attempt by authorities to eliminate a political opponent.

    Navalny’s return under threat of arrest could boost his popularity. Other prominent activists, such as businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and chess legend Garry Kasparov, continue to criticize the Kremlin, but from abroad.

    Ruslan Karadanov, who went to the Berlin airport Sunday to show support, said he thought Navalny was “very brave” to go back.

    “If he wants to continue his political activity, he has no other choice,” he said. “Here in Germany, he’ll just be forgotten.”

    In announcing his planned homecoming, Navalny said he “never considered the choice whether to go back or not.”

    “I never left,” he said on Instagram. “I ended up in Germany, arriving there in an intensive care box, for one reason: they tried to kill me.”

    Morris reported from Berlin. Karen DeYoung in Washington and Natalia Abbakumova and Katya Korobtsova in Moscow contributed to this report.

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    https://apnews.com/article/vladimir-...09346a5d9b4e69

    MOSCOW (AP) — Russian police arrested more than 3,000 people Saturday in nationwide protests demanding the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent foe, according to a group that counts political detentions.

    The protests in scores of cities in temperatures as low as minus-50 C (minus-58 F) highlighted how Navalny has built influence far beyond the political and cultural centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

    In Moscow, an estimated 15,000 demonstrators gathered in and around Pushkin Square in the city center, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks. Some were beaten with batons.

    Navalny’s wife Yulia was among those arrested.

    Police eventually pushed demonstrators out of the square. Thousands then regrouped along a wide boulevard about a kilometer (half-mile) away, many of them throwing snowballs at the police before dispersing.

    Some later went to protest near the jail where Navalny is held. Police made an undetermined number of arrests there.

    The protests stretched across Russia’s vast territory, from the island city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk north of Japan and the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk, where temperatures plunged to minus-50 Celsius, to Russia’s more populous European cities. Navalny and his anti-corruption campaign have built an extensive network of support despite official government repression and being routinely ignored by state media.

    “The situation is getting worse and worse, it’s total lawlessness,” said Andrei Gorkyov, a protester in Moscow. “And if we stay silent, it will go on forever.”

    The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests, said at least 1,167 people were detained in Moscow and more than 460 at another large demonstration in St. Petersburg.

    Overall, it said 3,068 people had been arrested in some 90 cities, revising the count downward from its earlier report of 3,445. The group did not give an explanation for its revision. Russian police did not provide arrest figures.

    Undeterred, Navalny’s supporters called for protests again next weekend.

    Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin and which Russian authorities deny. Authorities say his stay in Germany violated terms of a suspended sentence in a 2014 criminal conviction, while Navalny says the conviction was for made-up charges.

    The 44-year-old activist is well known nationally for his reports on the corruption that has flourished under President Vladimir Putin’s government.

    His wide support puts the Kremlin in a strategic bind — officials are apparently unwilling to back down by letting him go free, but keeping him in custody risks more protests and criticism from the West.

    In a statement, the U.S. State Department condemned “the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists this weekend in cities throughout Russia” and called on Russian authorities to immediately release Navalny and all those detained at protests.

    Navalny faces a court hearing in early February to determine whether his sentence in the criminal case for fraud and money-laundering — which Navalny says was politically motivated — is converted to 3 1/2 years behind bars.

    Moscow police on Thursday arrested three top Navalny associates, two of whom were later jailed for periods of nine and 10 days.

    Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

    Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was airlifted to Germany found no traces of poison and have challenged German officials to provide proof of his poisoning. Russia refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny was poisoned.

    Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly poisoned him in August and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the recording as fake.

    Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for a decade, unusually durable in an opposition movement often demoralized by repressions.

    He has been jailed repeatedly in connection with protests and twice was convicted of financial misdeeds in cases that he said were politically motivated. He suffered significant eye damage when an assailant threw disinfectant into his face. He was taken from jail to a hospital in 2019 with an illness that authorities said was an allergic reaction but which many suspected was a poisoning.

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    MOSCOW (Reuters) - Police in Moscow detained Oleg Navalny, the brother of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, on Wednesday during simultaneous searches of properties linked to the opposition politician, his allies said.

    Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to demand that the Kremlin release Alexei Navalny from jail, where he is serving a 30-day stint for alleged parole violations, which he denies.

    Police had said the protests were illegal and detained close to 4,000 people. Navalny’s allies plan to hold other rallies this Sunday.

    Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, tweeted that Oleg had been in his brother’s apartment as it was being searched. It was not clear why he had been detained.

    Oleg Navalny was released from prison in 2018 after serving three-and-a-half years for an embezzlement conviction that Navany’s suppporters say was designed to put pressure on Alexei and smother dissent. Alexei was given a suspended sentence in the same case.

    Zhdanov said police appeared to be conducting the searches as part of an investigation into calls to hold protests, which breached restrictions imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “A lot of ‘heavies’ in masks. They started breaking down the door,” he tweeted.

    Zhdanov also posted video taken at another location showing Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei’s wife, telling police to wait for her lawyer to arrive as they banged loudly at the door.

    Navalnaya’s lawyer, Veronika Polyakova, was allowed inside the apartment by police after standing outside the door for several hours.


    Slideshow ( 3 images )
    “It used to be that touching the family was against the code of honour,” Polyakova tweeted. “Now there is neither code, nor honour.”

    Police also searched the offices of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, his allies said. Photos on social media showed around 20 masked men waiting to gain entry.

    Navalny has not yet returned to his home since being poisoned and almost killed in Russia last summer. Last week he was arrested at the airport as he returned to Moscow from Germany, where was treated and recovered.

    Reporting by Anton Zverev, Alexander Marrow and Maxim Shemetov; Writing by Tom Balmforth and Gabrielle T?trault-Farber; Editing by Kevin Liffey

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-r...KBN29W1Z8?il=0

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    https://apnews.com/article/alexei-na...b2fdc5bbe15932

    MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to prison for more than 2 1/2 years, finding that he violated the terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning. The ruling ignited protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

    Navalny, who is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had denounced the proceedings as a vain attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into submission.

    After the verdict that was announced about 8 p.m., protesters converged on areas of central Moscow and gathered on St. Petersburg’s main avenue, Nevsky Prospekt.

    Helmeted riot police grabbed demonstrators without obvious provocation and put them in police vehicles. The Meduza website showed video of police roughly pulling a passenger and driver out of a taxi.

    The ruling came despite massive protests across Russia over the past two weekends and Western calls to free the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner.

    “We reiterate our call for the Russian government to immediately and unconditionally release Mr. Navalny, as well as the hundreds of other Russian citizens wrongfully detained in recent weeks for exercising their rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the ruling.

    The protests lasted until about 1 a.m. About 650 people were arrested, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.

    The prison sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and politically motivated.

    Navalny was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from his five-month convalescence in Germany from the attack, which he has blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny any involvement. Despite tests by several European labs, Russian authorities said they have no proof he was poisoned.

    As the order was read, Navalny smiled and pointed to his wife Yulia in the courtroom and traced the outline of a heart on the glass cage where he was being held. “Everything will be fine,” he told her as guards led him away.

    Earlier in the proceedings, Navalny attributed his arrest to Putin’s “fear and hatred,” saying the Russian leader will go down in history as a “poisoner.”

    “I have deeply offended him simply by surviving the assassination attempt that he ordered,” he said.

    “The aim of this hearing is to scare a great number of people,” Navalny added. “You can’t jail the entire country.”

    Russia’s penitentiary service said Navalny violated the probation conditions of his suspended sentence from the 2014 conviction. It asked the court to turn his 3 1/2-year suspended sentence into one that he must serve in prison, although about a year he spent under house arrest will be counted as time served.

    Navalny emphasized that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his 2014 conviction was unlawful and Russia paid him compensation in line with the ruling.

    Navalny and his lawyers have argued that while he was recovering in Germany from the poisoning, he couldn’t register with Russian authorities in person as required by his probation. He also insisted that his due process rights were crudely violated during his arrest and described his jailing as a travesty of justice.

    “I came back to Moscow after I completed the course of treatment,” Navalny said during Tuesday’s hearing. “What else could I have done?”

    Tens of thousands of people took to the streets the past two weekends to demand Navalny’s release and chant slogans against Putin. On Sunday, police detained more than 5,750 people nationwide, which was the biggest one-day total in Russia since Soviet times. Most were released after being handed a court summons, and they face fines or jail terms of seven to 15 days, although several face criminal charges of violence against police.

    “I am fighting and will keep doing it even though I am now in the hands of people who love to put chemical weapons everywhere and no one would give three kopecks for my life,” Navalny said.

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    Navalny’s team called for a demonstration Tuesday outside the Moscow courthouse, but police were out in force, cordoning off nearby streets and making random arrests. More than 320 people were detained, according to OVD-Info.

    Some Navalny supporters still managed to approach the building. A young woman climbed a pile of snow across the street and held up a poster saying “Freedom to Navalny.” Less than a minute later, a police officer took her away.

    Before the ruling, authorities also cordoned off Red Square and other parts of central Moscow, as well as Palace Square in St. Petersburg, anticipating protests. Police flooded the centers of both cities.

    In court, Navalny thanked protesters for their courage and urged other Russians not to fear repression.

    “Millions can’t be jailed,” he said. “You have stolen people’s future and you are now trying to scare them. I’m urging all not to be afraid.”

    Observers noted that authorities want Navalny in prison, fearing he could run an efficient campaign against the main Kremlin party, United Russia, in September’s parliamentary election. “If Navalny remains free, he is absolutely capable of burying the Kremlin’s plans regarding the outcome of the Duma election,” said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov.

    After his arrest, Navalny’s team released a two-hour YouTube video about an opulent Black Sea residence allegedly built for Putin. It has been viewed over 100 million times, fueling discontent as ordinary Russians struggle with an economic downturn, the coronavirus and widespread corruption during Putin’s years in office.

    Putin insisted that neither he nor his relatives own any of the properties mentioned in the video, and his longtime confidant, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, claimed that he owns it.

    As part of efforts to squelch the protests, authorities have targeted Navalny’s associates and activists across the country. His brother Oleg, top ally Lyubov Sobol and several others were put under house arrest for two months and face criminal charges of violating coronavirus restrictions.

    Full Coverage: Russia
    The jailing of Navalny and the crackdown on protests have stoked international outrage.

    British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the “perverse ruling, targeting the victim of a poisoning rather than those responsible, shows Russia is failing to meet the most basic commitments expected of any responsible member of the international community.”

    Russia has dismissed the criticism as meddling in its domestic affairs and said Navalny’s current situation is a procedural matter for the court, not an issue for the government.

    “A Russian citizen sentenced by Russian court in accordance with Russian laws. Who gave US the right to judge if it was wrongful or not? Wouldn’t you mind your own business, gentlemen? Recent events show that there are a lot of things for you to mend!,” Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, said on Twitter.

    More than a dozen Western diplomats attended the hearing. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said their presence was part of efforts by the West to contain Russia, adding that it could be an attempt to exert “psychological pressure” on the judge.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia is ready for dialogue about Navalny, but sternly warned it wouldn’t take Western criticism into account.

    “We are ready to patiently explain everything, but we aren’t going to react to mentor-style statements or take them into account,” Peskov told reporters.

    ___

    Jim Heintz in Moscow and Jill Lawless in London contributed.

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