Alexei Navalny, Russia's opposition leader and a prominent critic of the Kremlin, has been detained at a Moscow airport moments after he landed from Germany. Russian Federation denied any involvement and said it found no proof the opposition politician was poisoned, accusing him of fabricating it as part of working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
The prison service, which has asked a Moscow court to turn Navalny's 3 1/2-year suspended sentence into a real one, said it's "obliged to take all the necessary action to detain Navalny pending the court's ruling".
In a statement Russia's penitentiary service said Mr Navalny "had been wanted since 29 December 2020 for repeated violations of the probation period".
Confusion surrounded his arrival in Russian Federation - his plane was scheduled to land at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, where supporters and media were waiting.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to Novichok. "I feel I am a citizen of Russian Federation who has the full right to return to his home", Navalny said at Berlin airport.
Navalny is ignored or given negative coverage by state-controlled TV, the primary source of news for many Russians, which makes it unclear how much support he enjoys among ordinary citizens.
The FSIN said it would be "obliged" to detain Navalny once he returned to Russian Federation.
"This is the best moment in the last five months", he told reporters after he boarded the plane on Sunday.
The Kremlin had ordered Navalny to return saying his continued stay in Germany, where were was flown in a coma in August, breached a suspended jail sentence against him.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia Navalnaya on their flight to Moscow on Sunday | REUTERS
But the 44-year-old opposition politician laughed and joked with journalists on his plane, saying he was not afraid and did not believe he would be arrested.
Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin's side for a decade, unusually durable in an opposition movement often demoralized by repressions.
Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has called for European Union sanctions against Moscow, while Amnesty International accused Russian authorities of waging "a relentless campaign" to silence Navalny.
"Mr Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable", Jake Sullivan, Biden's incoming White House national security adviser, said on Twitter.
They refused to open a fully-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Mr Navalny was poisoned.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, demanded Navalny's immediate release, too. The FSB has since claimed the recording was fake.
The Moscow prosecutor's office, which had officially warned 15 pro-Navalny organisers, had said meeting him en masse was illegal because it was not sanctioned by the authorities.
FILE - This handout picture posted on September 15, 2020 on the Instagram account of @navalny shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie picture with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital.
