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On Monday, the opposition leader posted on YouTube a recording of a telephone conversation with a suspected agent of the Russian internal secret service FSB, who acknowledged the attack. Navalny pretended to be an assistant to the head of the Russian Security Council to gain the trust of the FSB employee.
The call came in the course of the investigation of various media, including the news magazine “Spiegel”. According to this, an FSB “assassin squad” had been in Navalny for years. Navalny collapsed on a domestic flight in Siberia in August. Findings from various Western laboratories later showed war agent Novichok in his body. The alleged FSB man said in the now-posted phone call that the poison was adhering to the inside of Nawalny’s underwear.
The 44-year-old opposition member only survived because the flight did not last long enough and paramedics treated him very quickly, the man said. When Navalny collapsed, the pilot brought the plane to the ground in Omsk, where the anti-Kremlin was taken to hospital. Such a “chain of events” is “the worst factor that can happen in our work,” the man said by phone.
Navalny had explained to his interlocutor on December 14 that he would have to deal with the failed attack by the leader of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. He made the phone call from Germany because, after weeks of treatment at the Charit in Berlin, he was still in rehab to regain strength.
The FSB reacted to the post overnight: It was a forgery, the secret service said, according to the state agency Ria Novosti. Navalny’s “alleged investigations” are a “planned provocation to discredit the Russian FSB.” An investigation would be launched.
Navalny had repeatedly referred to President Vladimir Putin as the mastermind behind the assassination. There was a large police presence at the home address of the blogged suspect in Moscow, as Navalny employee Lyubov Sobol posted on Twitter. Later that night, Sobol was arrested and filmed as well. The video also shows that several journalists were there.
Last week, various media outlets published investigative findings that at least eight Russian intelligence agents allegedly carried out the attack on Navalny. In his big annual press conference, President Putin spoke of an observation of Navalny by Russian intelligence agents, but clearly denied the poisoning. “If someone had wanted that, they would have finished it too,” Putin said.
Navalny himself, his staff, but also many experts have already described Putin’s words as a partial confession. Russia denied that its opponent had been poisoned and declared that it had destroyed all of Novichok’s supplies. Parts of the Russian leadership even accused the Western secret services of having built the case to pillory and punish Moscow internationally. The EU has imposed sanctions against Russia for the poisoning.
Germany, Austria and other countries had repeatedly called on Russia to solve the crime. Russia, on the other hand, demanded proof of Novichok poisoning. Navalny also demanded the return of the clothes he was wearing on the day he was poisoned and which he had stayed in Russia. “We washed them too,” the alleged FSB man said by phone when Nawalnys asked about the pants. “It’s clean too, everything is fine.”
The video of the call itself was viewed more than half a million times three hours after it was posted. Over and over the man wavered in the 45-minute conversation, but Navalny, aka Maxim, persisted: he only needed “two paragraphs” for a first preliminary report. Do you also call other men? – “Of course.” And don’t you mind talking about those things on the phone? – “But we haven’t talked about anything special.”
