Alexei Navalny returns to Moscow to face Vladimir Putin

IT IS 8.30PM on January 17th. Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia stride through the arrivals terminal of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. A gaggle of journalists is trying to keep up. Mr Navalny spots a bright poster of the Kremlin on the wall. He stops in front of it. Cameras snap. “I am not afraid…this is the happiest day for the past five months of my life,” Mr Navalny declares. “I have come home.”Those were Mr Navalny’s first public words back on Russian soil. (Five months earlier he had fallen into a coma after being poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent, and was evacuated to Germany for treatment.) Moments after he spoke, he was detained by officers in black uniforms at passport control, who led him away into the unknown. His wife hugged and kissed him, then wiped her lipstick from his cheek, uncertain when and if she would see him again.