Moscow, Russia:
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny stated Monday he had tricked a safety agent into admitting the Federal Security Service (FSB) sought to kill him this summer time and placed poison in his underwear.
In a weblog post the Kremlin critic stated he phoned a man named Konstantin Kudryavtsev, who he stated was a chemical weapons specialist with the FSB domestic intelligence agency.
“I called my killer. He confessed everything,” Navalny stated on Twitter, a claim rejected later Monday by the FSB.
Navalny stated he disguised his telephone quantity and presented himself as an aide to Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, saying he required information and facts for an official report on the attempted poisoning.
The opposition leader published an audio recording and a transcript of the telephone contact and released a video of him conducting the conversation.
He stated that voice evaluation “would demonstrate that it is indeed” Kudryavtsev speaking.
In the audio recording, the voice on the other finish of the line initially sounds hesitant and cautious but ultimately tells the story and explains why Navalny managed to survive the poison attack.
The FSB late Monday described the telephone contact as a “provocation aimed at discrediting” the agency.
It stated that the telephone conversation “about the alleged actions against” Navalny would not have been achievable devoid of “the support of foreign intelligence services,” adding that the video the Kremlin critic published of the contact was “fake”.
Navalny, 44, fell violently ill in the course of a flight from Siberia to Moscow in August and was hospitalised in the Russian city of Omsk ahead of getting transported to Berlin by health-related aircraft.
Experts from a number of Western nations concluded that the Kremlin critic was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent — a claim that Moscow has repeatedly denied.
A joint media report led by the Bellingcat investigative web-site final week revealed what it stated had been the names and photographs of chemical weapons authorities from the FSB that had tailed Navalny for years.
Poisoned underwear
In his weblog post on Monday, the opposition leader stated that final week he known as the safety agents identified in the report. He stated practically all hung up on him except the man he stated was Kudryavtsev.
During that contact the individual believed to be Kudryavtsev stated that his unit had not anticipated the pilot to make an emergency landing in Omsk.
He stated that if the flight had been permitted to continue, Navalny would not have survived.
In the recorded comments, the agent stated an attacker had placed the poison along the inner seams of a pair of Navalny’s underwear.
He detailed how he and a different FSB agent had flown to Omsk right after the poisoning and removed any trace of the poison.
However, Kudryavtsev under no circumstances explained his precise part in the operation.
On Monday Navalny’s associate Lyubov Sobol went to a developing on the outskirts of Moscow exactly where the Bellingcat report stated Kudryavtsev lives.
According to video she livestreamed on her Twitter account, police surrounded her vehicle and later detained her.
Journalists also arrived at the scene and rang the doorbell to Kudryavtsev’s reported apartment, but no 1 came to the door.
‘They are dumb’
Bellingcat as properly as Der Spiegel and Russian web-site The Insider had been provided access to Navalny’s account and also published reports on Monday.
“I’ve been covering the FSB for years and never thought that they were great professionals. But Navalny’s prank comes as shock even for me,” Russian journalist Irina Borogan wrote on Twitter.
“They are dumb and that makes them even more dangerous,” she added.
Last week President Vladimir Putin rejected reports that the FSB had poisoned Navalny, even though he recommended the Kremlin critic is supported by US intelligence and if that is the case then Russia ought to tail him.
“But this does not at all mean that it is necessary to poison him. Who needs him?” the Russian leader stated.
If the Russian particular services had wanted to poison Navalny, “they would have taken it to the end,” he added.
Putin has refused to pronounce Navalny’s name in public, alternatively referring to him as “the patient in Berlin”, amongst other factors, when asked straight about the opposition leader.
Navalny has stated that Putin was behind his poisoning and that he will return to Russia as soon as he has created a complete recovery in Germany.
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