The 2.5-hour flight by Russian carrier Pobeda took off from Berlin Brandenburg Airport and is due to land in Moscow's Vnukovo, which was heavily guarded by police Sunday.
Navalny arrived in Germany five months ago in a coma after being poisoned with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia during the Soviet years. After an extraordinary recovery, Navalny appears ready to return to his role as the thorn in President Vladimir Putin's side, seemingly undeterred by his close shave with death.
He thanked all the other passengers on the flight as he and his wife, Yulia Navalnya, boarded the plane in Berlin, according to a live feed from TV Rain.
"Thanks to you all, I hope we will get there fine," Navalny said. "And I'm sure everything will be absolutely great."
Several Western officials and Navalny himself have openly blamed the Russian state for the poisoning, which the Kremlin has denied.
"They are doing everything to scare me," Navalny said in an Instagram post and video Wednesday. "But what they are doing there is not of much interest to me. Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, I miss it."
Navalny had told his supporters on social media Wednesday to "come meet me" when he lands in Moscow. He said his decision to return home was spontaneous.
Russian authorities reacted swiftly. On Thursday, the country's prison authority (FSIN) said it was obliged "to take all action to detain" Navalny before a court hearing he is due to attend.
Moscow authorities also issued a warning for those planning to meet Navalny at the airport, saying the city viewed this gathering as an unsanctioned demonstration. In recent months, Russia has passed several laws to quell protests and authorities have arrested peaceful demonstrators.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Navalny wrote a post to thank Germany, adding that Germans were "nice, sympathetic, friendly people."
"Doctors and nurses. Physical therapists and police officers. A lot of cops. The neighbors who invited us to drink, and those who allowed us to rent. Politicians and lawyers. Shopkeepers. Journalists. The prosecutors who interrogated me on requests from Russia. Coaches. Teachers. And even, once, the Chancellor. I had quite a wide circle of friends here. And I can only say a huge thank you to everyone."
Navalny, who has been detained by Russian authorities many times, was placed on the country's federal wanted list during his time in Germany at the request of the FSIN, which in December accused him of violating probation terms in a years-old fraud case that Navalany dismisses as politically motivated.
Now the FSIN alleges that Navalny has been in violation of the terms of his suspended sentence by failing to show up for scheduled inspections.
The FSIN has requested that the court replace his suspended sentence with a real prison term. A hearing has been scheduled for January 29, and if the request is satisfied, Navalny will likely be jailed for 3.5 years.
In 2014, Navalny was found guilty of fraud after he and his brother Oleg were accused of embezzling 30 million rubles ($540,000) from a Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. While Navalny was given a suspended sentence, his brother was jailed.
What's next for Navalny?
If Navalny is not convicted later in January, he will still face an investigation for a newer fraud case, in which he and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have been accused of misusing donations from supporters. That will give authorities a choice in how to muzzle him -- from placing him under pre-trial house arrest to a weeks-long stay in a detention center.
But political observers are speculating on a full spectrum of possible scenarios, from immediate arrest to a laborious charade of legal threats and short-term detentions.
Abbas Gallyamov, a political consultant and former Kremlin speechwriter, said on Facebook that Navalny would "definitely" be arrested.
"Why am I so sure? Because by initiating these legal cases, the Kremlin has created an expectation within the society," Gallyamov wrote. "Should it back out of this now, everyone would see it as a weakness, and most of all, [Putin] is afraid to do anything deemed weak."
A senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, Andrey Kolesnikov, said in an interview with TV Rain that Navalny could remain free but be portrayed as a "boogeyman" in bed with the United States, interfering with Russia's political affairs.
"That is [the Kremlin could] start playing political games with him: Leave him at large, make his life even harder than before, and have him as an object of constant attacks, a permanent body that will enforce the line of an American administration or the CIA."
Putin, who refuses to acknowledge Navalny as a legitimate opponent, has described the extensive media coverage and investigations into the poisoning as a fabrication by Western intelligence, and said in December that if Russian security services had wanted to kill Navalny, they "would have finished" the job.
"The situation with Navalny looks like two trains running towards each other at full speed, bound to collide," said Tatyana Stanovaya, a visiting fellow, also at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "There will be many victims."
Attacks on Navalny's allies have indeed continued. Pavel Zelensky, a cameraman with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, was arrested Friday and will be detained until the end of February.
According to Agora, a Russian human rights organization, Zelensky was accused of extremism for tweets from September, in which he blamed the government for journalist Irina Slavina's self-immolation. Before taking her own life, Slavina blamed pressure from Russian law enforcement for her decision to self-immolate.
Navalny's opponents ready for his return
Navalny has previously been targeted by various agent provocateurs. At least two radical pro-government groups hinted they were mobilizing people to join the gathering at Vnukovo airport ahead of Sunday.
SERB -- a notorious nationalist group that Navalny blamed for assaulting him with a green-colored antiseptic in 2017, in which he nearly lost an eye -- told Open Media that they planned to visit the airport as they had "missed Navalny."
And members of Zakhar Prilepin's Guard, a movement with roots among Donbas separatists in Eastern Ukraine, said in an online forum that they intended to present Navalny with "a written warning."
"If he attempts to undermine the constitutional order on his part, Zakhar Prilepin's Guard will demand that he be expelled from the Russian Federation or will expel him on its own," the statement says.
Navalny's future could also hang on the reaction of the Russian public to his return and possible arrest. So far, the Kremlin's messaging on the poisoning has largely resonated with Russians.
A December poll by an independent pollster Levada showed that almost half of Russians believed Navalny's poisoning was either "staged" or "a provocation" by the Western intelligence agencies.
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