the u.s the eu and canada have called
for the immediate release of kremlin
critic alexei navalny
he was arrested after landing in a
moscow airport on his return from berlin
navalny had been in germany recovering
from a nerve agent attack last august
which he blames on the kremlin
russian authorities said they've
detained navalny for violating the terms
of a suspected
prison sentence suspended prison
sentence
a kiss goodbye then he's taken alexei
navalny is arrested at passport control
just minutes after expressing hope he
might go free
i'm not afraid i'll calmly go through
border control
i'll cross the border and go home i know
i'm right
all legal actions against me are fake
just minutes earlier navalny's plane had
landed unexpectedly at moscow's
charometyervo airport
it had been diverted from a different
moscow airport where it had previously
been expected to land
there dramatic scenes unfolded police
arrested dozens of navalny supporters
who wanted to greet the kremlin critic
personally authorities had 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
is dangerous otherwise they wouldn't
want to imprison or kill him
he is fearless and now 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 percent of the
population
and who cannot be controlled
on august 20th last year navalny was
admitted to hospital in olmsk siberia
after he lost consciousness on a flight
navalny's wife
asked president vladimir putin
permission to send her husband to
germany for treatment
surprisingly the kremlin allowed it
navalny was treated for several weeks at
the cherokee hospital in berlin
during this time german army scientists
found evidence
that the russian had been poisoned with
the nerve agent novichok
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 at
his annual press conference
vladimir putin responded with mockery
who needs him if we had wanted to we
would have finished him
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 reed is at 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
alexey navalny
we saw in that statement that he made
at the airport upon his arrival that
alexi nawani 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 coming back isn't a
choice either he never
questioned that choice that's what he's
said repeatedly
since he woke up from that coma 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 irrelevance
going forward political irrelevance by
not being here in russia in the country
especially ahead of parliamentary
elections here duma elections
in the country which are scheduled to
take place later uh this year
where alexey navini plans to lead the
charge on this kind of strategic
voting strategy which he's 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 u.s
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 joseph called on
russian authorities to respect
navalny's rights and release him
immediately
jared what's the german government
saying about nabani's arrest in russia
well german foreign minister heiko maas
has called for
navalny's immediate release he said that
navalny returned to russia
of 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 been fears over for
navalny's safety
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 stefan
seibert the government spokesman said
was that the government was glad that
alexei navani
had recovered enough to a point where he
felt
ready to return home some
countries are calling for sanctions to
be imposed
on russia in relation to this case do we
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
uh russia to invest the energy that it
is currently using and prosecuting
alexey navalny and use that energy and
actually
investigating what 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 these transcripts and
it also has forensic evidence like blood
tissue and clothing samples
that all of this together is more than
enough all that it needs to
to carry out a thorough investigation
into
what happened to alexei navalny the
government saying that
any investigation should be carried out
inside russia
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 uh for the kremlin
certainly going forward
uh having alexey navain back in russia
is
as you say a thorn in their side
certainly an inconvenience as i said
ahead of the the duma elections which
are coming up
we don't of course know uh what will
happen
to alexei navain he's in pre-trial
detention
now and the prison service
has recommended that his conditional
service his conditional sentence rather
on an old embezzlement
conviction should be turned into real
jail time it could
uh that could mean that alexey navalny
could be
put behind bars for quite a long time
we don't know we do know that if there
are sanctions if there are words
condemning
russia from the eu as we've been seeing
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
uh thank you very much to you both
you