MOSCOW (AP) – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Monday released a recording of a phone call he said he made with an alleged state security officer, revealing some details of how the politician was supposedly poisoned and identified the media as being part of a team that Navalny reportedly followed for years.
The man in the recording said he was involved in cleaning up Navalny’s clothes “so that there would be no traces” after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top critic fell into a coma during a domestic flight over Siberia. During the recorded conversation, the man said that if the plane had not made an emergency landing, “the situation would have been different.”
The man, who was named in a news report last week as an agent of the Russian Internal Security Service FSB, pointed to Navalny’s underwear as a place where the substance that poisoned the politician may have been planted.
Navalny fell ill during the August 20 flight in Russia and was flown to Berlin two days later while still in a coma for treatment. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, showed he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
The Russian authorities have firmly denied any involvement in the poisoning.
Last week, the Bellingcat research group released a report claiming that agents of the Russian Internal Security Service of the FSB had been following Navalny during his travels since 2017, “had received specialized training in chemical weapons, chemistry and medicine,” and some of them were “near”. from Navalny in the time frame “in which he was poisoned.”
The investigation, conducted by Bellingcat and Russian news outlet The Insider in collaboration with CNN and German news outlet Der Spiegel, identified the alleged FSB agents after analyzing phone metadata and flight information.
Navalny, who is recovering in Germany, said the report proved beyond a doubt that FSB agents tried to kill him on Putin’s orders. On Monday, he posted a video on his YouTube channel entitled “I called my killer. He confessed.”
The video showed him speaking on the phone with one of the alleged agents. Bellingcat and other media identified the man Navalny said he spoke with as Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a trained chemical weapons specialist. The investigation alleged that Kudryavtsev traveled to Omsk – the Siberian city where the plane carrying Navalny made an emergency landing when he became ill and where the comatose politician was first hospitalized – just days after Navalny was transported to Berlin by airlift.
Navalny said he called the FSB’s alleged operative hours before Bellingcat’s report was released. Navalny introduced himself as assistant to Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and said he urgently needed to inform the man about what had happened in another Siberian city, Tomsk, where the politician believes he has been poisoned.
The talk lasted 45 minutes, Navalny said. Bellingcat and The Insider have published its full recording and transcripts.
The man on the other end of the call said he was involved in “processing” Navalny’s clothes so that “there would be no traces.” The clothes Navalny wore when he was in hospital in a coma have not been returned to him.
The man acknowledged that he knew several other alleged FSB agents mentioned in the Bellingcat investigation. On a few occasions he expressed his reluctance to speak through an unsecured line, but continued to answer Navalny’s questions without mentioning the politician by name or the toxic substance he was exposed to.
While posing as an assistant to the Security Council, the politician asked “what went wrong” and why Navalny survived the poisoning. The man on the other end replied, “It would have been different” if the plane hadn’t crash-landed and “if (it wasn’t) for the fast work of the ambulance workers on the runway.”
When Navalny asked which item of clothing had the highest concentration of the toxin, the man said it was underwear. He suggested that the substance was “quickly absorbed” and therefore no traces of it could be found on the body of the politician.
The man also said he was aware of the international scandal that followed Navalny’s disease: “I also watch TV and read the Internet. They weren’t expecting any of this, I’m sure everything went in the wrong direction. “
The Associated Press was unable to independently verify the identity of the man Navalny spoke to in the video or his claims. The FSB told Russian state news agency Tass that the recording Navalny released was fake.
The video was viewed more than 5.5 million times on YouTube within hours of being posted.
Earlier this month, Russian officials dismissed the Bellingcat investigation and other media outlets.
Last week, Putin charged that the investigation was based on data from US spy agencies. The authors have denied any link to US or other Western intelligence agencies.
“It’s not some kind of investigation, it’s just the legalization of equipment provided by US special services,” the Russian leader claimed at his annual press conference. He said this means that Navalny “depends on the support of US special services.”
“It’s curious, and in that case, special services should indeed keep an eye on him,” Putin said. ‘But that doesn’t mean it is necessary to poison him. Who needs that? “
Navalny, who is both an anti-corruption researcher and a politician, is one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics. His anti-corruption foundation has denounced the abuse of government officials, including some at the highest level.
Navalny, the most prominent member of the Russian opposition, campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was not allowed to participate. He set up a network of campaign offices across Russia and has since nominated opposition candidates in regional elections, putting increasing pressure on members of Russia’s ruling party, United Russia.