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Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that opposition figure Alexey Navalny is supported in his work by US intelligence services. Putin added that if Russian security services wanted to assassinate the western-leaning protest leader, they would have "finished the job." He also insisted that the FSB were within their rights to follow Navalny, given their suspicions.

Earlier this week, a joint report by the US and UK state-funded Bellingcat, Russia's The Insider, plus mainstream news outlets CNN and Der Spiegel, claimed that Navalny was poisoned with the knowledge of the very highest echelons of government, including Putin himself. In response, the Russian head of state rubbished their work as "fabrications."

"This is not some kind of investigation. This is the laundering of materials from the American special services. Our special services know this and use telephones wherever they see fit."

Russia's parliamentary system is evolving, with at least 16 parties set to participate in next year's election, having been dominated by three groups for almost two decades.

Russia's two largest opposition parties, the Communists and the LDPR, have been led by Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky since 1993 and 1992 respectively. Both men are now in their 70s, and it is expected that they will soon need to pass on the baton.

Putin noted that political parties with local representation no longer need to collect a long list of signatures to participate in federal elections and, therefore, could pose an extra challenge to the current "traditional, established" factions. "The voter decides who is elected," Putin said. "The goal of all traditional parties is the same: the well-being of the country."

Russia's next parliamentary election is coming in 2021, the first following updates to the constitution granting more powers to elected MPs across a number of issues. According to new laws, the State Duma now makes more decisions regarding the formation of the government, with the ability to select the prime minister and deputy prime ministers. "There is now the perfect coupling between the government and MPs," Putin said.

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A package of new measures designed to protect the secrecy around Russian security officers is working its way through the country's parliament, just one day after Western internet sleuths claimed to have traced an agent's phone.

In a press release, the State Duma parliament said the rationale for the bill was that

"the unauthorized publication on the internet of information about events and circumstances of the private life of law enforcement officers, regulatory officials and military personnel is currently expanding, negatively affecting their ability to exercise their powers, hindering the administration of justice, and the fight against crime."

The news comes one day after US government-funded online investigations outfit Bellingcat claimed to have pinpointed a member of the FSB, the country's top domestic security agency, to within a six-minute drive of where opposition figure Alexey Navalny was staying when he was allegedly poisoned in August. According to them, the officer had flown to the Siberian city of Tomsk and was located roughly within the same area the day before Navalny was taken ill on a flight to Moscow. Navalny's team and Bellingcat allege that the events amount to a state-sponsored attempt on his life with the nerve agent Novichok.

Russia has strenuously denied claims of involvement, with the Kremlin labelling earlier allegations in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper as "bulls**t." Vladimir Putin's team is yet to respond to the details of Bellingcat's new report, but a press conference has been called for Thursday, where the president may take questions on the matter.

Eliot Higgins, the founder of the Western state-backed group, pointed to the new measures as proof that his unit has exposed security flaws. "Despite official silence on our Navalny investigation," he wrote on Twitter, "it seems The State Duma is rapidly passing legislation seemingly in reaction to our work." That said, the measures were proposed over a week ago, so it is more likely to be related to previous instances where there were concerns over access to confidential data online.

The Bellingcat expose has, however, sparked fears that it could be part of wider Western intelligence efforts against Russia. Former Russian Duma member Sergey Markov previously claimed that "Bellingcat looks very much like the information warfare department of MI6 to me." He added that he believes "very professional people are working on their falsifications." The group previously came under fire for moving away from its original stated intention of using only open-source material, admitting to relying on so-called "confidential human sources" in its investigation into the alleged poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

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