While the rest (like intervention or holding back by the west shortly after 1990) may have some truth in it, the following has not – or rather is echoing official Putin talk.
(I do not know any internal secrets of Putin, all i know he is a somehow dependable man towards other nations, governing with an iron fist hidden in a velvet glove, sometimes forgiving in personal matters or in things that interest him, well trained as a spy knowing all those special methods to guarantee obedience and how to set the machine of mutual distrust within the government and externally to work. Maybe this is the man Russia needs, but then i think this is the usual convenient justification for the same old methods going on in Russia forever, or at least back to the Tsars. Ex chancellor Schroeder likes him, but then he also said Putin was a flawless democrat. Ahem.)
"Technically Navalny is not under arrest, he is being held under guard untill the court hearing on his breach of parole (I think?). As to the protestors they were charged with violating COVID-19 related restrictions on public gatherings."
Technically? I'd say practically and really Navalny is under arrest, whatever you try to call it.
So they said Navalny should come back, otherwise he would be arrested the next time he set foot on russian ground. So he officially returns, and is being arrested. Not even a fake court decision, right into prison.
A later court hearing on his "breach of parole", sure. Does anyone really believe this, even in Russia? What exactly does Putin or the FSB say about the poisoning attempt? Should not THEY be before court for attempted murder?
The protestors charged and arrested because of "violating Covid 19 restrictions". Easy, then by any civilian standard they can get a fine and immediately be released.
Whatever the rulers say about Navalny, anyone else says that he always speaks the truth. This is why they support him. This is what everybody says. Sans the apparatchiks and trolls of course.
Poisoning Navalny somehow did not work out, so he has to be reduced to an "authoritarian nationalist" (
), trying to become a political leader himself (oops some things do not fit), and his reputation has to be destroyed, so everyone forgets about him?
Hint: Won't happen.