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According to Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny, an agent of the Russian national secret service FSB is said to have admitted to the poison attack on him. On Monday, Navalny posted a recording of a phone call with the alleged FSB agent on YouTube with the caption “I called my killer. He confessed.”
Navalny pretended to be an assistant to the head of the Russian Security Council in the December 14 conversation, to gain the man’s trust. The incognito call is related to the investigation in several outlets, including the news magazine Spiegel bill. The journalists had published the results of the investigation last week, according to which at least eight Russian intelligence agents allegedly carried out the attack on Navalny.
The Russian national secret service FSB has described the phone call as false. The conversation was a “planned provocation to discredit the Russian FSB,” the FSB announced Monday night, according to state agency Ria Novosti. Investigations would be launched.
Meanwhile, the Moscow Foreign Ministry announced that confidence in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had fallen further because it was once again “hostage” to those who used it for geopolitical interests. In October, the OPCW had detected the poisoning of Navalny with a neurotoxin from the Novitschok group, and thus confirmed the results of laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden. Germany had repeatedly asked Russia to solve the crime. Russia, on the other hand, had denounced the withholding of evidence.
Navalny had collapsed on a domestic flight in August. The alleged FSB man said in the now-posted phone call that the poison was adhering to the inside of underwear. Navalny only survived the attack because the flight did not last long enough. The pilot had made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk. Navalny was first taken to a hospital there and then flown to the Charité in Berlin.
The Russian opposition politician is said to have been poisoned with a chemical nerve agent developed by the Novitschok group in the Soviet Union. Russia had repeatedly denied allegations that it did nothing to resolve the case and requested evidence. At his annual press conference last week, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin admitted that the secret service was watching Navalny. But there is no reason to poison his fiercest opponent, the president said.
