Name: Why was Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny arrested upon his arrival in Russia? | DW News
Uploaded: 2021-01-18T18:35:13.000Z
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the US, The EU and Canada have called for the immediate release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Basic passive voice

He was arrested after landing in a Moscow airport on his return from Berlin.

Past perfect

Navalny had been in Germany recovering from a nerve agent attack last August, which he blames on the Kremlin.

Russian authorities said they detain Navalny for violating the terms of a suspected prison sentence.

Suspended Prison sentence, No smoking a kiss Goodbye then he's taken.

Alexei Navalny is arrested at passport control just minutes after expressing hope he might go free.

Just minutes earlier, Navalny's plane had landed unexpectedly at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

It had been diverted from a different Moscow airport, where it had previously been expected to land.

Police arrested dozens of Navalny's supporters who wanted to greet the Kremlin critic personally.

Authorities have declared their presence illegal and blocked access to the terminal with police vehicles.

Some Kremlin observers say the response shows the Russian government is afraid of Navalny.

Navalny is dangerous, otherwise they wouldn't want to imprison or kill him.

He's also famous, even outside of Russia.

That is exactly what the Kremlin doesn't want.

Opposition politicians who are recognized by 70 or 80% of the population and who cannot be controlled.

On August 20th last year, Navalny was admitted to hospital in Omsk, Siberia.

Navalny's wife asked President Vladimir Putin permission to send her husband to Germany for treatment.

Navalny was treated for several weeks at the charity hospital in Berlin.

During this time, German army scientists found evidence that the Russian had been poisoned with the nerve agent, Nova Chuck.

Other Western experts came to the same conclusion.

Russia, meanwhile, dismissed the allegations as a political ploy by the West and has so far refused to investigate the attack.

When asked about Navalny and his annual press conference, Vladimir Putin responded with mockery.

If we had wanted Thio, we would have finished him off.

Putin was responding to Navalny's allegations that a so called killer squad from the domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, had poisoned him.

But instead of addressing these allegations.

Moscow has now put Navalny behind bars, and we have team coverage on this story.

Emily Sherwin is our correspondent in Moscow, and Jared Read is that our parliamentary studios here in Berlin, Emily Navalny barely survived the poisoning last August.

Why did he decide to go back to Russia, where the same could happen again?

Well, you know, Terry, I think all opposition activists here in Russia know that it's risky to be a Kremlin critic, and that's what they regularly tell me.

People regularly tell me that they would be even willing to die for their cause, and I think that you can probably say the same about Alexi Navalny.

We saw in that statement that he made at the airport upon his arrival that Alexi Navalny says he's not afraid.

He has said in the past that leaving Russia was actually not his choice.

He was brought there in a coma, and that's why I'm coming back.

That's what he's said repeatedly since he woke up from that coma.

Um, he knows, I think, though also that if he didn't come back to Russia, he could run the risk of potentially slipping into kind of relevance going forward political relevance by not being here in Russia in the country, especially ahead of parliamentary elections here.

Duma elections in the country, which was scheduled to take place later this year, where Alexi Navalny plans to lead the charge on this kind of strategic voting strategy, which has been advocating where he wants people to vote for the candidate most likely to beat Vladimir Putin's United Russia party Well.

Navalny's arrest has drawn massive international condemnation.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called it the latest in a series of Russian attempts to silence Navalny, and the EU's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called on Russian authorities to respect Navalny's rights and release him immediately.

Jared, what's the German government saying about nobody's arrest in Russia?

German Foreign Minister Hiko Mass has called for Navalny's immediate release.

He said that Navalny returned to Russia off his own free will and he described Russia as Navalny's personal and political home and said it was incomprehensible that he had been arrested upon his arrival back in Russia.

Mass also repeated the German government's position that Alexei Navalny was the victim of a crime.

Last September, Angela Merkel described it as an attempted murder with a nerve agent.

There, of course, had bean fears over for Navalny safety Um upon his arrival in Russia and last week, a government spokesman was asked whether it had whether the government had tried to discourage Alexei Navalny from going back at all.

And what Stephon side but the government spokesman said, was that the government was glad that Alexei Navalny had recovered enough to a point where he felt ready to return home.

Some countries Jared, they're calling for sanctions to be imposed on Russia in relation to this case.

Do you know if Germany is likely to join those calls for sanctions?

I think it's probably a little bit too early to say that yet.

But what German Germany has repeated is that it wants Russia to invest the energy that it is currently using and prosecuting Alexei Navalny and use that energy and actually investigating what uh happened to him.

What we found out over the weekend is that transcripts of interviews carried out uh, by Berlin prosecutors with Alexei Navalny were given to Russian prosecutors and what the German government said was that now it has thes transcripts, and it also has a forensic evidence, like blood tissue and clothing samples, that all of this together is more than enough all that it needs.

Thio carry out a thorough investigation into what happened to Alexei Navalny, the government, saying that any investigation should be carried out inside Russia.

Mm Emily Alexei Navalny is clearly a thorn in Vladimir Putin's side.

How is Russia likely to deal with him now?

Well, I think that for the Kremlin, certainly going forward having Alexi Navalny back in Russia is, as you say, a thorn in their side.

As I said ahead of the Duma elections which are coming up, we don't, of course, know what will happen to Aleksei Navalny.

The prison service has recommended that his conditional service, his conditional sentence rather on an old embezzlement conviction, should be turned into riel jail time.

That could mean that Alexi Navalny could be put behind bars for quite ah, long time.

We do know that if there are sanctions, if there are words condemning Russia from the U as we've been seeing, um that kind of in a sense is old news for the Kremlin, and they'll probably just continue doing what they want.

Emily in Moscow and Jared here in Berlin.