Kremlin Critic Alexey Navalny claimed that he had fooled one of his FSB assassins into revealing details about his poisoning.
Kremlin Critic Alexey Navalny claimed that he had fooled one of his FSB assassins into revealing details about his poisoning.
In CNN-Bellingcat’s report, Navalny reportedly used a spoofed telephone number and posed as “Maxim Ustinov” an assistant for Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev to call chemical weapons expert Konstantin Kudryavtsev last December 14.
According to their conversation, the novichok dose used to poison Navalny would have been fatal if the plane’s pilot hadn’t made an emergency landing in Omsk and if paramedics on the ground had not responded immediately.
“The flight is about three hours, this is a long flight. If you don’t land the plane the effect would’ve been different and the result would’ve been different. So I think the plane played the decisive part.”
Kudryavtsev explained that a recon team had applied novichok to the “inner seams” of Navalny’s boxer shorts, when Navalny was staying in the Siberian city of Tomsk.
Kudryavtsev also named Vasily Kalashnikov who was supposed to be part of a cover up mission after Navalny fell ill.
Phone records have shown that FSB officer Stanislav Makshakov contacted Kalashnikov after Navalny did not die from the poisioning attempt.
Kudryavtsev added he was sent five days later to Omsk to retrieve and sanitise Navalny’s clothes, including his underwear, and to remove all traces of novichok which was reportedly sucessful.
The revelation of the operations came a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin denied any involvement in Navalny’s poisoning.
