AGAINST UNIMAGINABLE odds, Alexei Navalny has bested Russian President Vladimir Putin at every turn over the years. Mr. Putin failed to slow Mr. Navalny’s crusade against official corruption, a sensation on YouTube. He failed to dent Mr. Navalny’s rising popularity as Russia’s most prominent opposition figure and proponent of a free society. The Russian authorities even failed, thankfully, in their attempt on Mr. Navalny’s life using a Cold War-era military nerve agent. Now, displaying extraordinary courage, Mr. Navalny is returning to Russia on Sunday. The world will be watching.
Mr. Navalny has been recuperating since he nearly died Aug. 20 on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He was treated after an emergency landing in Omsk and subsequently flown to Germany for tests and recovery. Laboratories in three Western countries and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have confirmed that Mr. Navalny was poisoned using a variant of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. Mr. Navalny, cooperating with the open-source investigative outfit Bellingcat and its partners, has traced the murder attempt to a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, that specializes in poisons. The investigation showed how the FSB has been shadowing Mr. Navalny for years, beginning in 2017, shortly after he first announced he intended to run for president of Russia, and continuing through the fateful trip in August. Even more astounding, Mr. Navalny confronted by telephone a member of the FSB team sent to Omsk to clean up the evidence, who confessed that the FSB intended to kill him, and disclosed the nerve agent had been smeared on Mr. Navalny’s underwear. Mr. Navalny’s life was saved by quick action by the pilot and emergency crews in Omsk.
Mr. Navalny, who rose to prominence as a fearless anti-corruption blogger, represents the desire of many Russians for leaders who will tolerate freedom of speech, the press, assembly and conscience, as Mr. Putin has not for two decades. Mr. Navalny’s videos are popular because they expose Russian leaders more interested in decorating their apartments on Central Park or berthing their yachts at Cap d’Antibes than improving conditions in Nizhny Tagil. Mr. Navalny speaks the truth to people about the man in the Kremlin and all those around him, and that is why they have set out to silence him.
The Russian authorities are now threatening to jail Mr. Navalny upon his return, on the basis of old charges that Mr. Navalny has dismissed as politically motivated and which the European Court of Human Rights had ruled were unlawful. Mr. Navalny bravely brushes aside the threats, saying that Russia is his home. No one doubts that the bullying Russian president has the power to isolate and crush his chief opponent. But in the end, he and Russia would be the losers if he did. Mr. Putin should leave Mr. Navalny alone, to speak out freely and live freely in Russia.
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