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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny a few weeks after the poisoning
The Russian presidency also reacted angrily by saying it had “enough work” and Alexei Navalny was suffering from a mania for grandeur and persecution after the release of a recording allegedly exposing a service agent who poisoned the opposition in August.
Yesterday a recording of a telephone conversation circulated in which Navalny claimed that he had framed an agent of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSS) and, posing as the government, made him admit to poisoning. The conversation with Konstantin Kudryavtsev was published a week after (although previously conducted) an investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider, and major western media, which contained a list of eight names of FSB agents involved in the poisoning.
Navalny’s condition deteriorated dramatically in August, during a flight between Siberian Tomsk and Moscow. An emergency landing in Omsk and Navalny, placed in an artificial coma, he was transferred to the Charité clinic in Berlin at the insistence of relatives and his family. The Bundeswehr laboratory said he had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Nochivok group: a substance from the same class was used against former Russian Sergei Skripal in the British city of Salisbury.
FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov and officials in President Vladimir Putin’s office have been sanctioned by the EU as the West accuses Russia of not cooperating in efforts to clarify the case.
Moscow does not see the need for an investigation and says it does not have access to materials to support the European conclusions on poisoning. Putin commented on allegations of interference from the FSB last week, concluding that he did not need to be poisoned, but “if they had wanted, they would have done the job.”
What exactly did they say in the Kremlin?
At a press conference that did not take place last week, formally because of Putin’s annual press conference (and critics say because of the investigation), his spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted angrily to the question of whether the Kremlin was aware of Navalny’s video or decided not to be interested. .
Peskov explained that there is no time for such materials. “Understand, in general, our work is enough, we do not complain about the lack of it. But I can tell you, abusing a little and letting me express my personal opinion, that I do not usually do,” said Peskov and began to assess the mentality. Bulk condition. Again, he did not name it: the Kremlin has used terms such as “Berlin patient” and “Berlin clinic patient” since the poisoning attempt. Today the exact word was “sick”:
“In general, we can, of course, say that the patient has a mania pronounced by persecution. A certain manifestation of mania can be clearly established for a person. Because, as they say, he is even compared to Jesus. And the rest, of course, they are manifestations of Freud. “
Spokesperson for President Vladimir Putin
After this comment, when asked how Putin evaluated the FSB’s work (after secretly confirming that what Belinkgat had written about the surveillance of Navalny by Russian agents was true), Peskov called the question “inappropriate.” The spokesman declined to comment further, adding that “neither the Kremlin nor anyone else can speak unequivocally about the poisoning.”
Peskov and Putin reiterated Moscow’s position last week that it had received no information from Berlin, the “Charis” and the teams that analyzed samples to confirm the poisoning, in Berlin, Sweden and France.
Arrests
Last night, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that the recording was false and that the operation showed “certain tactics” of the foreign services. Meanwhile, Moscow police detained and later released Lyubov Sobol, an employee of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK), after attempting to visit the home of Kudryavtsev, the alleged FSB officer who confessed to the crime, according to a recording released yesterday. . Sobol spent several hours in his car in front of Kudryavtsev’s house and, according to authorities, he received a signal from residents of the area.
She is not known to have been charged after she refused to testify. According to Medusa, several of Navalny’s supporters have been detained, including Sobolit Raspopov, an employee of Sobol’s campaign headquarters (she was a candidate in the Moscow City Duma last year), and two others.
Sanctions
Russia said today that it sanctions European representatives as punishment for measures taken by the EU in October following the alleged poisoning of the main opponent in the federation, Alexei Navalny, AFP reported, quoted by BTA.
Russia’s diplomatic mission said it had “expanded the list of representatives of EU countries that were prohibited from entering the Russian Federation.” No names are given, but they are diplomats from the three countries, whose laboratories found “Newbie” in Navalny’s body, explains AFP.
The counter-sanctions were announced to the representatives of the embassies of France, Germany and Sweden, summoned to the ministry. Upon leaving, after nearly half an hour, they made no statements to the media, TASS notes.
The Foreign Ministry said it considered “unacceptable” the European sanctions against six Russian officials, including Bortnikov, “on the pretext of their alleged involvement in the incident with the Russian citizen Alexei Navalny.”
In addition to the three countries, Russia accuses the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons of failing to provide documentation proving it is Novichok. Moscow claims there was no poison in Navalny’s body when he was hospitalized in Siberia before leaving for Germany. The authorities do not rule out that he was even poisoned in Berlin.
