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Putin Opponent Alexei Navalny Allowed to Fly Out of Russia After Ban Lifted

Kremlin had banned leading opposition figure from leaving the country.

Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, has been allowed to fly out of the country to attend a case at Europe’s top human-rights court a day after border guards prevented him from leaving. Navalny, an arch critic of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin, wants to attend a ruling at the European court of human rights in Strasbourg, France, on whether his repeated detentions by police in Russia have been politically motivated or not. He was prevented from flying out of Moscow on Tuesday over an allegedly unpaid court fine—but he claimed it was illegally enforced as a reason to stop him traveling abroad to attend the anti-Kremlin case. Navalny posted a photo of himself on Instagram passing through passport control at a Moscow airport on Wednesday, saying he'd been allowed to leave. Navalny has called Putin’s government a place of “crooks and thieves.”

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