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On Monday, Der Spiegel’s website investigative work with international partners appeared in the newspaper, revealing that a detachment of at least eight agents from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was responsible for the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a prominent figure. of the Russian opposition.
Members of the unit were identified and tried to contact them, but they did not want to respond to inquiries. Of the eight officers, all are men, three have medical degrees and two are experts in biological and chemical weapons. The detachment’s activities were coordinated by a doctor named Oleg Tajakin, an employee of the FSB Institute of Forensic Sciences. The institute, founded in 1977 as part of the Soviet State Security Commission (KGB), could be linked to several murders, including the case of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed in London in 2006 with a radiant isotope, Der Spiegel said.
The paper conducted the investigation in collaboration with Bellingcat, an international network of investigative journalists, The Insider, and CNN, Russia, which also specializes in fact-finding.
The investigation examined, among other things
- data on mobile telecommunications services in Russia,
- data on the location of the devices,
- passenger lists of Russian domestic flights,
and “other” sources.
During the analysis of the Russian databases, the document reconstructed the history of the detachment. FSB agents have been dealing intensively with Navalny since mid-2017, after Navalny announced his candidacy for the 2018 presidential election. He was followed at least thirty times on his flights within Russia.
The document also found indications that already in 2019, the detachment tried to poison Navalny. Certainly, there was also an attempt to poison the leader of the opposition in July of this year, but the poison penetrated the organization of his wife, Julia Navalny, and did not cause lasting damage due to the fortunate development of circumstances.
Photo: Brochure / AFP
It is also likely that the assassination attempt in August of a neurotox named rookies was authorized or instructed by the highest levels of the Russian state leadership. He notes that Oleg Tajakin paid a brief visit to Sochi with Konstantin Kudryavev, a member of the unit’s chemical weapons expert, just before the action, where several members of the political elite are in mandatory quarantine due to the coronary virus epidemic before the personal conversations with the Head of State Vladimir Putin.
Alexei Navalny is one of the best-known critics of the Russian head of state. On August 20, he negotiated with opponents in Siberia and fell ill on the plane back to Moscow. The plane made a forced landing in Omsk and the 44-year-old politician was transferred to a hospital there. The comatose politician was transferred to Berlin on August 22 to continue treatment.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also confirmed that it was a rookie-type chemical in blood samples from the Russian opposition.
According to German, Swedish and French studies, he was poisoned with novices. He was treated at the Charité University Clinic in Berlin for 32 days in an intensive care unit for 24 days. On September 23, his doctors said his condition had improved enough to continue treatment in outpatient care. Der Spiegel reports that his condition is improving and he is preparing to return home, writes MTI.
His condition improved significantly during his thirty-two days at the Charité Hospital in Berlin.
The case prompted the EU to impose sanctions on several senior Russian officials, including Alexander Bortnyikov, director of the FSB.
(Cover image: Navalny being transported to a Berlin hospital on August 22, 2020. Photo: Odd Andersen / AFP)
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