Russian officials were convinced opposition leader Alexey Navalny wouldn’t come back.
They’d warned he’d be jailed on arrival and steadily ratcheted up threats of new probes, amid allegations ranging from stealing supporters’ donations to working for U.S. intelligence. Even fellow Kremlin critics told the 44-year-old activist it was too dangerous to return from Berlin, where he’d been recovering from a nerve-agent attack he and Western capitals blamed on President Vladimir Putin.
