Spycraft, assassination attempts, and a disgruntled Russian government vs Alexei Navalny

Billed as Russia's leading Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny was detained by police in Moscow on Sunday, moments after his return to Russia from Germany. Navalny's flight from Berlin was rerouted to away from Vnukovo airport to Sheremetyevo airport, leaving crowds gathered at Vnukovo to greet him perplexed. According to Kira Yarmysh, Alexei's spokesperson, he was "...taken away by police officers at the border. without explaining the reason..." According to reports, Navalny stated "...I am not afraid. I know that I am in the right and that all the criminal cases against me are fabricated.” moments before being led away for detention by police. Vyacheslav Gimadi, a defense attorney who states he has "notatorial power of attorney", has tweeted that "... Navalny is located in the 2nd department of the Department of Internal Affairs of Khimki: Prospect Mira 23A. I, a defense attorney with a notarial power of attorney, are not allowed to see him, they say he is sleeping..." This is the latest in escalating tension between Navalny and the Kremlin... the former stating that the Kremlin is responsible for the attempt on his life and for attempting to use force to silence him, the latter continuing to claim that criminal allegations against Navalny are legitimate, despite a verdict from the European Court of Human Rights that "... ruled that Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and his brother Oleg were unfairly convicted of financial crimes at trial in the so-called Yves Rocher case in 2014..." ...The poisoning of Alexei Navalny..., The 7:40 AM S7 flight 2614 from Tomsk to Moscow started unremarkably. Alexei Navalny, running late, grabbed a quick cup of tea at the Tomsk airport's Vienna Café. Less than two hours into the flight, Alexei was screaming in apparent agony. He'd been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent , and he reportedly felt that he knew he was dying. The prevailing thought was that the quick cup of tea he'd had at the airport was the vehicle for his poisoning. In an interview with the Moscow Times, Navalny describes the experience: "...Organophosphorus compounds attack your nervous system like a DDoS attack attacks the computer — it's an overload that breaks you..." When asked whether he felt pain due to the widespread footage of his seemingly screaming in agony, Navalny said, "...It was something else, worse. Pain makes you feel like you're alive. But in this case, you sense: This is the end..." By 9 AM, just 90 minutes after takeoff, Alexei was unconscious, and the flight had to make an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was rushed to the City Clinical Emergency Hospital No. 1. Fearing for his life, Navalny was evacuated to Berlin by the Cinema for Peace Foundation on a Challenger 604 air ambulance. Once he recovered, the activist said that Russian authorities were behind the attempt on his life, an allegation supported by a joint investigative journalist effort from The Insider, Der Spiegel, CNN, and Bellingcat, but denied by the Kremlin. In December 2020, Navalny (working with Bellingcat) released footage of a phone call he made with an alleged member of the Kremlin's "Poison Squad", one "Konstantin Kudryavtsev". In this footage, Kudryavstev is recorded to have said that the "...crotch of Navalny's underwear..." was targeted as the vehicle for the poison. ...The Kremlin's view on Navalny..., Putin broadly dismissed the investigation, saying that it was "...a trick to attack the leaders of Russia..." and claiming that Navalny enjoyed the support of U.S. intelligence, hence the Kremlin's keeping close tabs on Navalny. Putin also defended against the allegations of Russian official involvement in the poisoning, stating, "...If someone had wanted to poison him they would have finished him off...", while the FSB has called the recording of a conversation between Navalny and alleged Russian agent Kudryastev, "a fake designed to discredit the Kremlin". With a poll from the Levada-Center showing that half of Russia believed that either Navalny was not poisoned, or that his poisoning was an act of intentional disinformation in collusion with US intelligence, the Kremlin has some support in it's assertions of innocence. The Kremlin maintains its position that Navalny is a financial criminal, opening another criminal case against him in late December 2020, accusing him of fraudulently spending donations to organizations he controls on his personal needs. Because of his criminal sentencing, Navalny remains ineligible to run for president of Russia. Previously, Navalny entered a bid for the 2018 election in 2016, but he was found ineligible to participate in the election due to his status as a convicted felon. The Leninsky district court of Kirov repeated its sentence of 2013 (which was previously annulled after the decision of ECHR) and charged him with a five-year suspended sentence.