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AThe treatment of lexej Navalnyj in Germany is far from over. But the Novichok survivor is already causing problems for President Vladimir Putin. Navalnyj’s name, which Putin never spoke publicly, was heard several times at the UN General Assembly in New York. The new sanctions could, in Navalnyj’s sense, be directed personally against representatives of the regime. The details of a phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Putin, published by the newspaper “Le Monde”, revealed his irritability over the taboo subject Navalnyj: Putin described Navalnyj as a troublemaker, simulator and blackmailer.
Putin’s statements about Novitschok are even more serious: he left a shabby trail in Latvia, claiming that Navalnyj may have poisoned himself and that the war agent was “less complex than claimed.” The multitude of “versions” of the Kremlin apparatus to explain the collapse of Navalnyj (hypoglycemia, heat, cold, alcohol, diet) seem to be devalued from the highest point of view: Putin himself speaks, even if he allegedly insisted that nothing should use Novichok’s test weapon.
Mindless behavior
The apparatus is entangled in contradictions as if without a head. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Novichok was never made in either the Soviet Union or Russia. But the head of the foreign intelligence service SWR said that all of Novichok’s supplies in Russia had been destroyed under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Putin’s spokesman denied the contradiction, without argument.
And already in the form of the OPCW report it threatens new adversity: after Novichok’s findings by laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden, Moscow is preparing for the Hague-based organization to acknowledge that Navalnyj has been poisoned. with the banned chemical warfare agent. The results of the OPCW, of which Russia is a member, cannot “be taken for granted,” said Russia’s representative in the organization, Alexandr Shulgin. “Russian experts” would have to check “everything” first, Schulgin said, declining to implicate the OPCW experts in the case as “interference in the internal affairs” of Russia. Chancellor Sergei Lavrov stressed that if Navalnyj was poisoned, after leaving Russia. When Navalnyj was already in a coma.
The politician himself has impaled the cynicism and clumsiness of the apparatus on several occasions in posts on Instagram. In it, Navalnyj also lets the public participate in his recovery, which is contemporary, but atypical for Russia, showing his haggard face, his scars, his family and speaking of weakness and happiness. On Friday, Navalnyj thanked his “unknown good friends” who saved him in Russia: the pilots who landed the plane in which he collapsed shortly after taking off from Tomsk, despite a bomb threat, and the first responders who did. spontaneously. the correct antidote, atropine. These posts garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes” in no time.
Navalnyj is now an even bigger problem
If Navalnyj returns, it will be an even bigger problem for the Kremlin after the failed assassination attempt. The fate of other Putin opponents shows that a survived attack is no guarantee of safety. The persecution of Navalnyj already continues. Now it has been known that in late August, when Navalnyj was in a coma in Berlin, the bailiffs seized the family’s apartment. The opposition member has often established his domicile, 78 square meters in a prefabricated building in the Marino district of eastern Moscow, a subject in which the Kremlin media claims he is wealthy.
The seizure dates back to a claim for damages by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, feared by hating media, mercenaries and Internet “trolls.” Prigozhin, otherwise shy of the public, makes constant comments on the Navalnyj case. Some have suspected that he was behind the attack; Others assume that the offensive aims to divert the perpetrators’ attention in the state apparatus. On the day of the poisoning, Prigozhin reported that Navalnyj had been drinking vodka with barbiturates and mockingly offered to pay for treatment in Russia. He then had one million rubles (11,100 euros) transferred to the Berlin Charité “for treatment,” and the clinic reimbursed the money. “My friend Alexej is healthy as a bull. ‘Novitschok’ only did him good, “Prigozhin said, writing about the mortgage. If Navalnyj cannot find accommodation with other activists,” I will prepare a cheap camp for him in the corridor.
