(Eurasia Daily Monitor) The decision of Russian democratic opposition leader Alexei Navalny to return to Moscow was announced on January 13 in a deliberately matter-of-fact way—and produced a full-blown political storm. His message on Instagram was as plain as it gets: “The air-ticket for Sunday is just purchased, come meet me” (Moscow Echo, January 13). What turned this long-promised step into a daringly brave challenge to the Kremlin was the stream of strong warnings from various Russian law enforcement agencies about the criminal investigations against him; a warrant for his arrest was issued last December (RIA-Novosti, January 14). The authorities clearly expected him to accept the fate of a political émigré and gradually fade into irrelevance. Navalny, however, refused to follow that script and wrote his own, in which the arrest upon arrival was a necessary step to the goal of liberating Russia from the corrupt autocracy (MBK-Media, January 17). […]
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