The Russian opposition woke up to a surprise on the morning of Nov. 16. Moscow’s Supreme Court unexpectedly scrapped opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s criminal conviction, and sent his case for a retrial. Convicting Navalny was the Kremlin’s way of stopping him from taking part in any national elections.
The court’s decision has opened the – until now unthinkable – prospect of Vladimir Putin’s main political foe running for president in 2018. The news was, unsurprisingly, met with suspicion in opposition circles.
