By Tom Balmforth, Anton Zverev and Polina Nikolskaya MOSCOW (Reuters) — Before he returned to Russia, opposition politician Alexei Navalny and his supporters had anticipated he would be arrested and planned to force the Kremlin to release him by staging repeated protests, a close ally has said. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, was detained on Sunday after flying home for the first time since being poisoned with what the West says was a military-grade nerve agent that Navalny says was applied to his underpants by state security agents. The 44-year-old lawyer, now in a …
Navalny, anticipating arrest, planned protests to force Kremlin to release him, ally says
