(L) Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Sefa Karacan; (R) Director of the Russian foreign intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin Sputnik / Alexey Druzhinin
Comment: Navalny's the simple idiot for thinking he's not expendable.
Writing on Twitter, Navalny said he is "sad to see what Russian intelligence has become," attacking SVR chief Sergei Naryshkin.
In an interview published on Friday, Naryshkin told the Moscow-based news agency RIA Novosti that, about a year ago, NATO intelligence agencies discussed sacrificing a Russian opposition figure to revive anti-government demonstrations. According to the intelligence chief, the country's protest movement has "completely shrunk and is approaching zero."
"You know, the issue of a so-called 'sacred sacrifice' was discussed at a high level," Naryshkin claimed. "Moreover, it was said that it would be better if this 'sacred sacrifice' was one of the leaders of the opposition."
However, he stopped short of directly linking Western intelligence agencies to the poisoning of Navalny. On the same day, Navalny retweeted a news story about the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs linking his illness to possible dietary issues. In response, the opposition figure wrote that he is "tired of laughing," noting that it was suggested he was poisoned by the West on the very same day that the Ministry pointed the blame at his food intake.
"Apparently, NATO countries persuaded me to go on a deadly diet," he wrote.
On August 20, Navalny fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. After an emergency landing in Omsk, he was taken to a local hospital, where he fell into a coma. Two days later, he was flown to the Charite clinic in Berlin at the request of his family and associates. After testing, German toxicologists discovered that the anti-corruption activist had been poisoned with a substance from the Novichok group of nerve agents. This claim has been denied by Russian doctors, who say that they did not find any trace of poison in his body. In October, Brussels approved sanctions against six senior Russian officials and one research institute, believed by the EU to be responsible for or have known about the alleged attack.
EU governments ignore request for evidence
The statement from the Russian diplomats said that "any uninvolved observer, even one far removed from chemistry and... chemical weapons, logically starts to have a feeling that everything that is happening is an amateurishly staged stunt." The official communiqué added that the row had been confected as "a sanction shot" because "Russia... sticks to its guns of not accepting certain rules imposed on it at the expense of national sovereignty, international law and common sense in general."
Moscow's comments come amid a diplomatic spat over the evidence of Navalny's poisoning, and the assertion of a number of European countries that Russia was behind it. Spokesman for the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office, Andrei Ivanov, told reporters on Friday that Moscow had sent its fifth request for further information on the incident to Germany, after previous missives had been ignored.
Ivanov said that "not a single question posed by the Russian side earlier has received a detailed explanation." He went on to question Germany's version of events, in which Navalny was poisoned before he embarked on a Moscow-bound flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk. "No poisoning agents have been found as a result of expert tests held on Russian territory", he claimed.
Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs also weighed in on the row, appearing to blame those who accompanied Navalny in Tomsk for conspiring to create the impression that Navalny had been poisoned. The agency said that it had been "determined during the inquiry that, after receiving the reports of Navalny's deterioration of health, the group of people accompanying him in Tomsk (Vladlen Los, Maria Pevchikh and Georgy Alburov) removed [potential evidence] from Navalny's hotel suite in an organized manner." Drawing its verdict on the case, it added that "their actions demonstrate a well-planned provocation."
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