00:40Russia: Pobeda Airlines plane carrying Navalny lands at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny landed at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport onboard a Pobeda Airlines plane on Sunday.
According to the press service of Pobeda Airlines, the plane landed at Sheremetyevo instead of the originally intended Vnukovo airport due to "technical problems at Vnukovo."
Earlier this month Navalny announced his intention to return from Berlin to Moscow on January 17, following his almost five-months stay in Germany where he was recovering after his alleged poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent in August.
At the end of December, over three months after his discharge from hospital, Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service demanded that Navalny visit its offices in accordance with the terms of a suspended sentence that he received for a 2014 embezzlement case. The agency warned that he would face a jail term if he failed to appear by December 29, a deadline he missed.
On January 12, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service formally requested that Navalny be jailed for breaching the terms of the suspended prison sentence. In a statement, they said they were obliged to take 'all available steps' to detain Navalny.
Supporters of the opposition figure planned to greet him upon his arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport despite the gathering having not been authorised.
Navalny arrived in the German capital aboard a medical plane on August 22 last year, after falling ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20. The plane had been forced to make an emergency landing in Omsk where Navalny was rushed to hospital.
The German government has said independent laboratories from France and Sweden had confirmed findings by German military toxicologists that Navalny was ‘poisoned’ with a Novichok nerve agent. Tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons also suggest Navalny was exposed to Novichok.
Russian authorities have called for evidence of the alleged poisoning and deny accusations of any Russian state involvement in the incident. Navalny had been convalescing in Germany following his discharge from hospital.
00:40Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny landed at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport onboard a Pobeda Airlines plane on Sunday.
According to the press service of Pobeda Airlines, the plane landed at Sheremetyevo instead of the originally intended Vnukovo airport due to "technical problems at Vnukovo."
Earlier this month Navalny announced his intention to return from Berlin to Moscow on January 17, following his almost five-months stay in Germany where he was recovering after his alleged poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent in August.
At the end of December, over three months after his discharge from hospital, Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service demanded that Navalny visit its offices in accordance with the terms of a suspended sentence that he received for a 2014 embezzlement case. The agency warned that he would face a jail term if he failed to appear by December 29, a deadline he missed.
On January 12, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service formally requested that Navalny be jailed for breaching the terms of the suspended prison sentence. In a statement, they said they were obliged to take 'all available steps' to detain Navalny.
Supporters of the opposition figure planned to greet him upon his arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport despite the gathering having not been authorised.
Navalny arrived in the German capital aboard a medical plane on August 22 last year, after falling ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20. The plane had been forced to make an emergency landing in Omsk where Navalny was rushed to hospital.
The German government has said independent laboratories from France and Sweden had confirmed findings by German military toxicologists that Navalny was ‘poisoned’ with a Novichok nerve agent. Tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons also suggest Navalny was exposed to Novichok.
Russian authorities have called for evidence of the alleged poisoning and deny accusations of any Russian state involvement in the incident. Navalny had been convalescing in Germany following his discharge from hospital.