Clara Ferreira Marques, Columnist

Vladimir Putin Is Stuck in a Navalny Catch-22

Almost any effort to silence the Russian president’s most prominent critic risks making him louder.

January 15, 2021 at 5:50 AM UTC

Clara Ferreira Marques is a managing editor for Commodities and Energy in Asia. Previously, she was a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member.

Heading home.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

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Vladimir Putin’s most troublesome critic is coming back. Alexey Navalny says he will return home to Moscow on Sunday, almost five months after a nerve-agent attack that left him fighting for his life and forced a dramatic air evacuation to Germany.

It’s a headache for the Kremlin, where officials had surely hoped the 44-year-old anti-corruption activist would take the hint. That’s because whatever they do after his plane touches down at Vnukovo Airport this weekend risks making an irritant worse.