'I'M NOT AFRAID'
Poisoned Putin critic Alexei Navalny kisses wife goodbye as he’s DETAINED moments after landing at Russian airport
POISONED Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny kissed his wife goodbye as he was detained moments after landing at a Russian airport last night.
Defiant Mr Navalny, 44, said "I'm not afraid" moments before he was led away by cops after he flew back to Moscow from Berlin with his wife Yulia.
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The brave opposition leader had been recovering in Germany after a Novichok nerve agent attack five months ago.
He was left fighting for life in a coma following the poisoning on a plane from Siberia to Moscow.
Mr Navalny last night said he was “absolutely happy” to be back home, which he described as “the best day in my life in the past five months”.
He added: “I’m not afraid and none of us should be afraid."
'NONE OF US SHOULD BE AFRAID'
Hundreds of supporters were at the airport to welcome Mr Navalny as he returned, chanting his name and "Russia will be free".
Cops met him at passport control, claiming Mr Navalny was being detained for 48 hours until a court ruled on his possible arrest.
He kissed his wife goodbye before being led away by the officers while being denied access to a lawyer.
Supporters now fear a Kremlin plot to lock him up before crucial elections - amid suggestions he may even face charges of treason for alleged collusion with America’s CIA.
Before flying to Russia, Mr Navalny said: "This is the best moment in the last five months. I feel great. Finally, I'm returning to my home town.
"What do I need to be afraid of? What bad thing can happen to me in Russia? I feel like a citizen of Russia who has every right to return."
'WE FLY HOME'
Mr Navalny tweeted before his flight: "We fly home."
He is a fierce critic of the Kremlin and has been described as "the man Vladimir Putin fears most".
The lawyer was heard screaming in agony as he fell seriously ill on a flight to Moscow on August 20.
Video showed Mr Navalny being stretchered from the aircraft to a waiting ambulance in the Siberian city of Omsk.
He was unconscious, according to his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, who suspects poison was added to his tea.
He was rushed to hospital with an initial diagnosis of “toxic poisoning”.
Earlier Mr Navalny was snapped drinking from a cup at a cafe at Tomsk airport before catching his flight.
Russia's prison service last week issued a warrant for his arrest, saying he had violated the terms of a suspended sentence he received on a 2014 conviction for embezzlement.
KREMLIN CRITIC
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the opposition leader's poisoning.
Supporters of Mr Navalny and journalists had come to Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, where the plane was scheduled to land, but it ended up touching down at Sheremetyevo airport, about 40km away.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests, said at least 37 people were arrested at Vnukovo Airport, although their affiliations weren't immediately clear.
Police prisoner-detention vehicles stood outside the terminal today.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that Mr Navalny was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Mr Navalny in Siberia before he was airlifted to Germany found no traces of poison and have challenged German officials to provide proof.
They refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Mr Navalny was poisoned.
Married dad Mr Navalny had been hit by a crude sex smear campaign prior to his return, believed to have been engineered by Putin aides.
Pro-Kremlin media had published nude pictures of a blonde beauty alleged to have been found on the anti-corruption campaigner’s laptop.
Several images were said to resemble Mr Navalny’s doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva, who has not commented on the attack.
In October, he denied reports that he had shared a Tomsk room with a close associate , London-based Maria Pevchikh, on the trip when he was poisoned.
He said: “We have a special protocol which does not allow anyone ever entering my room.
"Not a single person of the opposite sex, in a hotel or anywhere else, ever enters my room - because I know too well that later they will take the CCTV footage.
"So whatever was said about Pevchikh was, course, made up.”
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Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director, said: “Alexei Navalny’s arrest is further evidence that the Russian authorities are seeking to silence him.
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“The Russian authorities have waged a relentless campaign against Navalny.
“All Navalny supporters and journalists detained in Moscow Vnukovo Airport must be immediately and unconditionally released. Their only crime is wishing to greet Aleksei Navalny or to cover his arrival in Russia.”
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'I believe Putin poisoned me,' says Alexei Navalny in first video appearance since coma
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