Issue
Russian authorities have detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny at Moscow airport after he returned from Germany for the first time since his poisoning.
Background
Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia. Tests performed at the German hospital showed the presence of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Details
-
Navalny has maintained that the poisoning was carried out by the Russian authorities, who have denied any involvement in the attack.
-
Navalny came to prominence in 2008 after he started exposing corruption in Russian politics through a blog. In 2018, he was barred from standing against Putin in the presidential elections.
-
Navalny has spearheaded many anti-corruption rallies in Russia and is considered to be the face of the opposition in Russia. He has also been arrested on multiple occasions and since he started political campaigning.
-
It is not the first time that Navalny was faced with such a situation. Last year, Navalny was hospitalised after he suffered an allergic reaction in jail, possibly from an unknown chemical substance.
-
Recently, Navalny said that he had tricked a Russian intelligence operative into confessing to the botched attempt to kill him in August.
-
Russia has long been known to use poison as a way of eliminating political dissidents and spies. However, not all assassination attempts have been successful recently, suggesting declining professionalism.
-
Since the Cold War, the Soviet Union heavily invested in the development of poisons as a way of targetting enemies.
-
In 1921, Laboratory 12 was established on the outskirts of Moscow and researched poisons, drugs and psychotropic substances, thereby giving the Kremlin an array of tools to choose from.