Opposition leader Navalny to return to Russia

By Busra Nur Bilgic Cakmak

ANKARA (AA) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Wednesday said he is planning to return to his country.

“I am going back home on Jan. 17,” he said in a tweet.

Last September, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitriy Peskov said the opposition leader is free to return to Russia any time.

Navalny, 44, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, felt sick last August on a flight to Moscow.

After an emergency landing in Omsk, he spent two days in a hospital before being sent to Berlin for treatment. He is currently in Germany.

After tests in several laboratories, German officials said Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent, which was also used, according to the UK government, in a 2018 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British town of Salisbury.

Russian authorities deny any involvement in the case and contend that chemical weapons are neither developed nor produced by Russia since the last chemical round was destroyed in 2017, as verified and certified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.