Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny, and journalism’s power to drive protest

LAST AUGUST, Alexei Navalny—the Russian opposition leader and scourge of Vladimir Putin—was poisoned, and fell into a coma. Authorities initially refused to let Navalny leave the country for treatment—in order to hide evidence, his supporters surmised—but friends eventually managed to get him to Germany, where he stayed for months to convalesce. Recently, he made an announcement: he was coming home. A little more than a week ago, he boarded a flight for Moscow with a bevy of eager journalists and a few bemused onlookers. The plane was scheduled to land...