One of the Russian agents who followed the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, before the poisoning with the nervous agent Novichok in August, was deceived in revealing how the wrong operation was carried out in a 49-minute phone call with Navalny itself, the CNN and Bellingcat report
Why does it matter: Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that the Kremlin played a role in poisoning Navalny, calling the anti-corruption activist a pawn in Western intelligence and saying that Russian agents “would probably have done the job” if they were responsible.
The whole picture: Bellingcat and CNN found “voluminous data on telecommunications and travel” in a joint investigation published last week suggesting that the poisoning “was mandated at the highest echelons of the Kremlin.” Navalny’s call appears to be the first direct evidence that the Bellingcat chemical weapons unit being pursued was in fact involved in the attack.
Details: Navalny, who has recovered from long-term poisoning at a German hospital, provided audio recordings to CNN and Bellingcat of a call in which he replaced a senior security official with Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a member of a teams of toxins from the Russian Federal Security. Service (FSB).
- Kudryavtsev said the team applied Novichok to a pair of Navalny panties so that it would be absorbed through his skin when he started sweating.
- Navalny began to feel unwell on a flight to Moscow from the Russian city of Tomsk, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he received life-saving medical treatment.
- Toxicology experts told CNN that Navalny would have died almost certainly if he had flown to Moscow before being treated.
What are they saying: “Well, I think it had to happen shortly after that, maybe even … Or maybe it was calculated that it would fly, because you know, yes: it takes about three hours to fly, it’s a long flight,” he replied. Kudryavtsev when asked what went wrong in the operation.
- “If you didn’t land the plane, the effect would have been different and the result would have been different,” he added. “So I think the plane played a decisive role.”
While CNN and Bellingcat found no evidence that Kudryavtsev was in Tomsk for poisoning, the call suggesting he traveled to Omsk, where Navalny was treated, to clear the evidence.
- He told Navalny that the agents used a special procedure to clean Navalny’s clothes of any traces of Novichok: “They treated her with solutions, that it wasn’t … ohhhh … how to say it. .. they treated her so that there were no traces there, nothing like that. “
- Kudryavtsev also insisted that there was no chance Navalny could recognize the agents: “Oh, no, we always approached this strictly, changing our clothes and other things.”
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