Hospitalized Russian Politician Accuses Putin of Orchestrating Poisoning Attempt
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is recovering in Germany after being poisoned in Russia, said in comments published Thursday that only Russian President Vladimir Putin could have been behind the attack against him with a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Navalny’s supporters have frequently maintained that the poisoning could only have been ordered at the top level, although the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed the allegation.
Navalny, a corruption investigator who is Putin’s fiercest critic, was flown to Germany two days after falling ill on Aug. 20 on a domestic flight in Russia.
He spent 32 days in the hospital, 24 of them in intensive care, before doctors deemed his condition sufficiently improved for him to be discharged.
He has posted frequent comments online as his recovery has progressed, but in his first interview since the attack, he told Germany’s Der Spiegel, “I assert Putin was behind the crime,” according to an English-language copy of his comments the magazine published online.
“I have no other explanation for what happened,” Navalny, 44, said.
He asserted that his poisoning could only have been ordered by the heads of Russia’s military or intelligence agencies, officials who “cannot make a decision like that without being instructed by Putin. They report to him.”
The Kremlin on Thursday said that “such accusations against the Russian president are absolutely groundless and unacceptable.”
“Some of these statements in the mentioned publication we consider offensive,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov claimed that there was information that “specialists” from the CIA were working with Navalny and giving him instructions.
“There is information that these instructors are working with him these days,” Peskov said. “Instructions the patient is receiving are obvious. We have seen such lines of behavior more than once.”
Russia’s United Nations ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters that Navalny’s claim “is inherently insulting.”
In response to Peskov’s comments, Navalny on Thursday announced that he would sue the Kremlin spokesman and demanded that the alleged evidence of him working with the CIA be made public.
“If the authorities, on behalf of which Peskov speaks, have evidence of the nonsense he is talking about, then it’s a matter of Russia’s state security, and I demand that this evidence be published,” Navalny said in his blog.
Before he was transferred to Berlin for treatment, Navalny spent two days in a coma in a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, where Russian doctors said they found no trace of any poison.
German chemical weapons experts determined that he was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok, the nerve agent that Britain said was used in a 2018 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England.
Labs in France and Sweden corroborated the German findings.
Navalny told Der Spiegel that when he first fell ill on the plane he was taking from Siberia to Moscow, he was sure he was dying as he collapsed to the floor.
“Then I hear voices growing ever quieter, and a woman calling: ‘Don’t leave us! Don’t leave us!’ Then it’s over. I know I’m dead,” he said in the interview. “Only later would it turn out that I was wrong.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the poisoning an attempted murder, and she and other world leaders have demanded that Russia fully investigate the case.
Merkel had personally offered Germany’s assistance in treating Navalny, and the politician said “Germany has become a special country for me.” He said he had rented an apartment in Berlin to use as he recovers.
Merkel visited him in the hospital before he was released, which Navalny said was “totally unexpected.”
“We didn’t discuss anything secret or sensational. The visit was a gesture,” he said. “I was impressed by how precisely she knows Russia and my case.”
Russia has bristled at demands for an investigation, saying that Germany needs to share medical data in the case or compare notes with Russian doctors.
The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has collected independent samples from Navalny for testing, but results haven’t yet been announced.
Navalny scoffed at the Russian demands for tests and blood samples, saying there should “still be plenty of my blood in Omsk.”
“They’re naturally not interested in dealing with the matter as such. All they care about is painting the German government in the worst possible light,” he told Spiegel.
“The next thing they’ll do surely is accuse Angela Merkel of having personally poisoned me with Novichok.
The magazine reiterated what Navalny has previously said — that he plans to return to Russia when he is able to do so.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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