[ad_1]
A few days ago a group of international newspapers, including Bellingcat and the CNN, published an extensive investigation showing how a team of FSB agents, the Russian security services, had been stalking Russian opponent Alexei Navalny for years, and were in the vicinity of his hotel the night he was poisoned, the past August. On Monday, the same newspapers published a new article in which they recounted how Navalny contacted the agents responsible for the operation against him by telephone and, using a false identity, made one of them confess that the FSB is responsible for the poisoning. .
– Read also: The investigation into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny
The phone calls between Navalny and FSB agents took place on December 14, just hours before the publication of the original investigation that reveals the names and stalking activities of the latter. It is common journalistic practice to contact the subjects of an investigation to grant them the right of reply, but before these formal phone calls, he explained. Bellingcat, which is the most involved among the various media, Navalny asked to be able to contact the agents directly. The phone calls took place at 4:30 a.m. in Berlin (6:30 a.m. in Moscow), from a secret location where Navalny is recovering, in the presence of members of the Bellingcat.
On August 20 this year, Navalny collapsed while traveling on a plane that left the city of Tomsk, Siberia, and headed for Moscow. The plane landed in the nearest city, Omsk, where Navalny was admitted to intensive care. Doctors at the hospital initially said they found no signs of intoxication. After a couple of tense days, the Russian authorities allowed Navalny to be transferred to the Charité hospital in Berlin. There, doctors discovered that he had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, a highly toxic chemical compound that is also used as a chemical weapon. Other independent laboratories and the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, confirmed the poisoning. Navalny recovered after a period of coma.
The initial investigation of Bellingcat and others showed that a team of FSB agents who are part of a clandestine group specialized in the use of toxins and poisonous substances had been following Navalny since 2017 and were involved in the poisoning attempt. Russian President Vladimir Putin, during his annual press conference on December 17, responding to a journalist’s question, did not deny that the agents had followed Navalny, but added that “if the FSB had wanted to, it would have finished the job.” . .
Navalny contacted the agents involved in the follow-up operations one by one by phone. To increase the likelihood of being answered, he used a system to change the phone number displayed by the caller, so that it appeared that the calls were coming from the landline of an FSB office in Moscow that the agents were talking to. communicating. regularly (this practice is called caller identity spoofing).
During the first few calls, Navalny introduced himself with his first and last name, and all the officers hung up. Only one, Oleg Demidov, said he was sick with COVID-19 and could not speak, then hung up. At that point, Navalny decided to use a false identity. He introduced himself as Maxim Ustinov, claiming to be an assistant to the head of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev. Using this false identity, he called two other officers, Mikhail Shvets and Konstantin Kudryavtsev. The first one probably recognized him, said, “I know exactly who you are,” and hung up. The second, on the other hand, after some hesitation, fell into the deception and began to talk about the operation: the phone call lasted a total of 49 minutes, and Navalny posted a video of the entire conversation on his YouTube channel: it is in Russian But you can turn on English subtitles and scroll through it is still interesting to see reactions and expressions.
Kudryavtsev is a chemical weapons expert who worked for the Russian Defense Ministry before joining the FSB. Navalny, in his false identity as Maxim Ustinov, told him that he was writing a report on the operation (that is, the August poisoning) due to the many problems the operation was generating, adding that the call was authorized by Vladimir. Bogdanov, one of the top FSB officers.
According to the phone call, Kudryavtsev was not part of the team that was present in the Siberian city of Tomsk on the day of Navalny’s poisoning, but then he and a colleague went to Omsk twice, where Navalny was hospitalized, to recover. , treat and dispose of the opponent’s personal effects, in particular clothing. During the conversation, in fact, Kudryavtsev says that his superiors had recommended cleaning and treating with specific solutions especially Navalny’s underwear and in particular Navalny’s boxers, inside, in the part in contact with the genitals. Pressured by Navalny-Ustinov, Kudryavtsev admitted that the highest concentration of toxin was found inside the boxers and ruled out that traces were found on Navalny’s body because the substance is quickly absorbed through the skin.
Toxin experts heard Bellingcat and of CNN confirmed that this delivery method is perfectly compatible with Novichok. Navalny’s clothes were allegedly handed over to the FSB by the local Omsk police, and it is still not known today where they are: not even Kudryavtsev says he knows. The opponent’s collaborators have repeatedly called for his return, to no avail.
– Read also: For Russia’s foreign minister, the reconstructions on the Navalny poisoning are “fun to read.”
In the course of the conversation, Navalny also asks Kudryavtsev what he thinks are the reasons for the “failure” of the operation, at which point the agent indirectly confirms that the objective of the operation was to kill Navalny, when he says that ” things would have gone differently “(and thus Navalny would have died) if the flight on which Navalny felt ill had not landed in Omsk about half an hour after takeoff (he was heading to Moscow, the total trip should have taken 3 hours) if the ambulance that rescued him had not given him “some kind of antidote,” as the agent says. The rescuers immediately gave Navalny some atropine, a substance that works among other things against cases of poisoning by nerve agents, and according to experts it was this timely intervention that saved his life.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Kudryavtsev again attributes Navalny’s survival to the plane’s change of course. Navalny also asked Kudryavtsev if he thinks the amount of Novichok with which he was poisoned was enough, and he says: “From what I know, we calculated everything with a certain margin”, as if to say: we gave him more than he should . .
Among other things revealed by Kudryavtsev in the phone call is the confirmation of the identity of the two agents who participated in the poisoning operation in Tomsk: Alexey Alexandrov, who had already been identified by the previous investigation of Bellingcat using phone cell data, and Ivan Osipov, whose name is instead pronounced by Kudryavtsev. In addition, the agent mentions Colonel Stanislav Makshakov, already identified by the investigation, as the organizer and reference of the operation.
In addition to the Navalny video, Bellingcat published a video with the original audio of the call and the translations into English. The full text of the conversation is also posted on the website of Bellingcat.
Obviously, there are ethical problems in the method by which Navalny, Bellingcat and the others got the information from Kudryavtsev. Bellingcat He wrote that, “after an internal debate”, those who were in charge of the investigation considered that the public interest in knowing the facts prevailed over any other issue, “in light of the extraordinary circumstances” of the matter. Navalny, writes Bellingcat, did not make the phone calls on behalf of the police or security forces, nor was he conducting a journalistic investigation. To be Bellingcat is there CNN They then independently confirmed what emerged from the conversation. The Russian government has not responded to requests for comment from various newspapers, but has so far denied any responsibility for the assassination attempt.
[ad_2]
