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Russia has added new European officials to its “blacklist” in response to EU sanctions in October over the poisoning of Aleksei Navalny, the Kremlin’s main opponent.
Moscow makes the announcement a day after a telephone conversation in which a Russian agent is trapped and admits to the assassination attempt.
Thus, Russian diplomacy announced that it has “expanded the list of representatives of EU member states that are prohibited from entering Russian territory.” But Moscow did not publish these names.
The Moscow MFA denounces as “unacceptable” the European sanctions imposed on six Russian officials, including the director of the FSB Aleksandr Bortnikov, “on the pretext of his alleged involvement in the incident involving the citizen Navalny”.
“We will continue to respond appropriately to hostile actions by Western countries.”warns the ministry in a statement posted on its website.
The counter-sanctions were announced on Tuesday to representatives of the embassies of France, Germany and Sweden, convened at the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
These are the three countries that have announced that they have identified a Noviciok-like substance in the opponent’s body. These findings led to EU sanctions on Russian officials.
FSB agents trapped
Pretending to be an officer from another agency, Russian opponent Aleksei Navalny obtained testimony from a member of the FSB team who dealt with his poisoning.
The incriminating elements against the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB, former KGB) are accumulating in the case of the poisoning of Aleksei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s main opponent. But in addition to incriminating elements, the FSB also faces a series of humiliations, the most recent one from Navalny himself.
At dawn on December 14, a high-ranking FSB official named Oleg Taiakin woke up at the door of his apartment with a CNN reporter. The man did not even open the door because they asked him if his team was the one that poisoned Aleksei Navalny. It closed immediately. An inconceivable revelation for an FSB agent.
Clarissa Ward, CNN reporter, visits the coordinator of the team responsible for the Navalny case
A little later that day, Oleg Taiakin saw his face both on television and in a large-scale international journalistic investigation into the command involved in Operation Navalny. The British website The Bellingcat, specialized in espionage, the Russian portal The Insider, the US station CNN and the German publication “Der Spiegel” revealed the identities of eight FSB agents who have been following the Kremlin opponent for the last three years. , including your last trip. in Russia, in Tomsk, at the end of August.
A week later, the revelations about the Navalny poisoning continue, with details inside that were mistakenly overlooked. One of the members of the command, the chemical weapons specialist Konstantin Kudriavtshev, was caught by Aleksei Navalny himself. Informed about the journalistic investigation before its publication, the opponent called the eight members of the FSB team. Only one of them spoke, believing that on the other end of the line was an aide to the head of the National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev.
Traces of poison on Navalny’s panties
Skeptical of being called from an insecure line, Kudriavtshev is wary at the beginning of the conversation and chooses his words carefully. However, convinced by the interlocutor, that is to say by Navalny, that he absolutely needs some information for the preparation of a report that must soon be presented at the highest level, the agent finally provides details in a discussion of about 45 minutes.
Kudriavtsev did not participate in the poisoning operation, but in the destruction of the evidence, being more precisely responsible for recovering the opponent’s clothing from the Omsk Hospital where he was urgently hospitalized after being injured on the plane returning from Tomsk. in Moscow on August 20.
He estimates that the “target” survived thanks to the pilot of the plane and the medical personnel of the emergency service. “If I had flown a little more and not landed suddenly, maybe everything would have turned out differently,” says the man. When asked which garment recovered from Omsk required more work to remove traces of poison, the man referred to underwear. This could be the first solid information on how to administer Noviciok in the Navalny case. For now, the Russian side is refusing to return the clothes to the opponent, who was evacuated from Omsk to Berlin two days after his hospitalization at the insistence of his family.
Aleksei Navalny speaking with FSB agent Konstantin Kudriavtsev
A solid form of Noviciok
Experts consulted by CNN explained that it appears that the Russian agents used a solid form of the nerve agent against Aleksei Navalny, and not a liquid form as in the case of the double agent Sergei Skripal. They say that if the plane had not landed urgently in Omsk, Navalny would have had no chance of survival.
When Navalny pressured the officer to admit that he had not been given an inappropriate dose of poison, he defended himself: “As I understand it, I put a little more.”
The opponent does not present any proof of the identity of his interlocutor. However, he assured that “any vocal expertise can show that it is indeed” Kudriavtsev.
According to a journalistic investigation published a week ago, Kudriavtsev flew to Omsk on August 25, five days after the attempted poisoning.
The authors of the research write about Konstantin Kudriavtsev who is a specialist in chemical and biological weapons. He worked for a time at the Research Center of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, within the Department of Biosafety.
When asked about the FSB’s role in the Navalny poisoning, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the opponent was being monitored by subordinate agents, but denied trying to eliminate him through Noviciok. “If it had been wanted (this, ed.), The business would have been completed,” said the Kremlin leader at his annual press conference.
In fact, Moscow claims that its laboratories did not detect traces of Noviciok in Navalny, as evidenced by analyzes carried out in Germany, France and Sweden. From this defense approach, Moscow launches a counter-accusation, namely that Navalny was poisoned when he was not on Russian territory.
FSB: a “planned challenge”
Putting yourself in an embarrassing situation by the latest revelations and becoming the subject of jokes on social media, as if they were “panties washing,” the FSB reacted in a statement. The Russian agency claims that the record is “a forgery” and a challenge organized by foreign secret services.
“The video recording of (this) telephone conversation is false,” begins the FSB statement. This “alleged investigation” is a “planned challenge” that would not have been possible “without the technical and organizational support of foreign special services,” he says.
While Russia refuses to open an investigation and sheds light on the Navalny case, as demanded by Germany, France, and other countries, the Kremlin insists it is innocent and is trying to ridicule Navalny. After trying to prove that he is an alcoholic, he now refers to him as a “patient.” Furthermore, the Kremlin spokesman claims that he has information that Navalny compares himself to Jesus. In fact, Peskov gave an extensive psychological description on Tuesday. “We can, of course, say that the patient has a strong persecution mania. Certain manifestations of megalomania can also be clearly identified. Because, as they say, he really compares himself to Jesus.”Putin’s spokesman said, noting that this opinion is personal, not that of the institution it represents, a statement that is hard to believe.
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