Some more organized thoughts about what happened since Sunday: #Navalny announced his intention to return as soon as he had awakened from his coma. The RU leadership made a lot of threatening gestures to keep him away.

His arrest, literally upon the physical state border, was tragically symbolic - they really did not want to let him back in. Now the question is how long he will be kept “away” in prison. This is one of the decisions #Putin takes himself. It has nothing to do with the law.

#Navalny is attacking the RU state on two fronts: ubiquitous and endemic corruption and, part. since the poisoning, the inefficiency and incompetence of the secret services. Corruption and secret services are both pillars of the Russian political system.

But suffering from and frustration about corruption is ubiquitous, too; and the exposure of mistakes committed by the secret services threatens to deprive them of their aura of omnipotence and take away the fear of them. This is exactly what #Navalny is playing at.

A majority of Russians believe in the official #Navalny narrative : He is an insignificant blogger, he is not a politician but a criminal, he is an American spy, he is a German spy. With his return and the new/old “court case” new chapters of the narrative are being written.

So, a majority still believes this narrative. But an incredulous minority is growing with every publicised scandal - which suggests that #Navalny might disappear for a long time. What a price to pay!

Thanks to the past months, Germany, the EU, the West are now an integral part of the official #Navalny narrative. And #Navalny has become an element of the adverse narrative about the West. This is not going to change. On the contrary: it will become more entrenched.

Another interesting link emerged on Sunday between protests in #Belarus and #Navalny’s arrest, see this tweet by Tikhanouskaya and other expressions of solidarity since Sunday. https://twitter.com/tsihanouskaya/status/1350873612513902592

In a similar vein, protesters in Khabarovsk have been showing solidarity with protesters in Belarus since the summer. A new bond may grow between the increasingly frustrated and dismayed societies. Something neither Moscow nor Minsk will appreciate.

Because #Navalny is a danger domestically (and a Duma election is approaching fast), the authorities will not succumb to pressure from outside. Still it is vital for the #EU to keep their eyes on Matrosskaya Tishina and express disagreement and solidarity not only with #Navalny…

…but with the increasing number of repressed in Russia; to consider applying the new EU human rights sanction regime; and to weigh very carefully where engagement with the RU leadership makes sense - and where it doesn’t ( #NordStream2).