Alexei Navalny was detained at Sheremetyevo airport

Alexei Navalny was detained at Sheremetyevo airport. TASS reports this with reference to the press service of the Moscow department of the Federal Penitentiary Service.

“On January 17, at Sheremetyevo Airport, employees of the search department of the operational department of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Moscow detained Alexey Navalny, sentenced to a suspended sentence, who had been wanted since December 29, 2020 for multiple violations of his probation. The further measure of restraint against Navalny A.A. will be determined by the court. Until the court’s decision, he will be in custody,” the publication quotes a message from the Federal Penitentiary Service.

The opposition politician flew in from Germany, where he was undergoing treatment after being poisoned by Novichok. A few hours before Navalny’s arrival, his supporters began to gather at Vnukovo airport, where the plane with the politician on board was supposed to land. The plane was diverted to another airport, Sheremetyevo, before landing.

Security forces, including riot police, brutally detained more than 30 people. Among those who were detained first were civil activist Konstantin Kotov, employees of the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by Navalny Lyubov Sobol, Ruslan Shaveddinov and Alexey Molokoyedov. Read more about the arrests on our website .

January 18 01:30 The BBC, citing Alexei Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova, reports that the politician is in the 2nd police department in the city of Khimki. The department employees confirmed this verbally, but refused to allow the FBK lawyer to see Navalny, citing the night time, the lawyer said.

• Alexei Navalny underwent a long course of treatment and rehabilitation in Germany after he became ill on August 20 on a plane flying from Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, then, after lengthy negotiations, the politician was taken from Russia and hospitalized in the German Charité clinic. Navalny spent about two weeks in a coma. Representatives of the Berlin Charité clinic, where Navalny was taken, stated that they found signs of a chemical warfare agent from the Novichok group in his body. In October, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the presence of traces of poison from the Novichok group in Navalny’s tests.
• On December 14, 2020, an investigation was published by a group of journalists from Bellingcat , The Insider and CNN with the participation of Der Spiegel and the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by politician Alexei Navalny. Investigators found that a group of FSB officers with medical training had been monitoring Navalny since 2017, and that security forces tried at least three times to poison Navalny with a nerve agent from the Novichok group. The Investigative Committee refused to check the actions of the FSB officers whom Navalny accused of poisoning.
• On December 21, Alexey Navalnypublished a video in which he claims that he spoke on the phone with the participant in his poisoning, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, introducing himself as assistant to Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. During the conversation, the interlocutor told Navalny the details of the assassination attempt.
• On January 11, the Federal Penitentiary Service demanded that Navalny’s suspended sentence, assigned in the Yves Rocher case, be replaced with a real one. The next day he announced that on January 17 he would fly to Russia. Soon, the Federal Penitentiary Service announced its intention to detain Navalny “upon establishing his whereabouts.”