The poisoning of Alexei Navalny is a press freedom story

Last Thursday, Alexei Navalny drank a cup of tea in a Russian airport, which is a risky thing to do when you’re a prominent opponent of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin. Navalny, who had been in Siberia working with opposition candidates, fell ill shortly after boarding a flight back to Moscow, necessitating an emergency landing. The news quickly got out, and observers worldwide feared that Navalny had met the same fate as many other critics of Putin: poison. Forty-four hours later, Navalny was on a plane again, in a coma this time, and bound not for Moscow but for Germany, where he was to receive treatment. Navalny’s Russian doctors had initially insisted that he wasn’t well enough...