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Omon special police, protesters in Yekaterinburg: Protest at minus 30 degrees
Photo: Anton Basanayev / AP
On the same evening that Alexei Navalny arrived in Moscow from Berlin almost two weeks ago, Dmitrij Kisselev had his weekly news program.
The Kremlin's chief propagandist drew an unexpected parallel between the return of the opposition politician and the return of Vladimir Lenin from exile: Just as Germany smuggled the revolutionary from Zurich to Petrograd in 1917 just to harm Russia, so today Navalny is sluicing to Moscow, claimed Kisselev.
He also showed film recordings of German police officers who were bringing Navalny to Berlin airport.
He did not say that the victim is under personal protection.
It was a strangely exaggerated comparison.
Lenin's return in 1917 sparked the October Revolution, and his arrival at the Finnish train station in Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then called) is a key moment in Russian history.
Navalny, on the other hand, is only disparagingly referred to as a "blogger" on Kremlin television (and also by Kisselev).
So should he be more?
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