Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny plans to return to Russia on Sunday after poisoning attack

Navalny insists the attack was carried out by Russia’s main security agency, the Federal Security Service, on the orders of President Vladimir Putin

Navalny and his allies have accused the Kremlin of trying to block Navalny’s return to Russia by threatening him with jail

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Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. Photo: EPA

Published: 6:03pm, 13 Jan 2021Updated: 6:05pm, 13 Jan 2021

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday he planned to return to the country on Sunday from Germany, where was recovering from a poisoning attack, despite facing a threat of jail.

The 44-year-old Kremlin critic wrote on Instagram that he had booked a flight that will arrive in Russia on January 17.

“There was never any question of ‘returning or not’ for me. Simply because I didn’t leave. I ended up in Germany … for one reason: they tried to kill me,” the anti-corruption campaigner wrote on Instagram.

Navalny has been in Germany since late August after he fell violently ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow and was hospitalised in the city of Omsk. He was then flown out to Berlin in an induced coma.

Western experts concluded that Navalny was poisoned using the Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok.

Navalny insists the attack was carried out by Russia’s main security agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), on the orders of President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin denies any involvement.