The State Department blamed Russia’s internal security agency, the FSB, on Wednesday as behind the near-fatal attack on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny allegedly by the Novichok nerve agent in a vigorous indictment against Moscow.
The United States believes that agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) used a Novichok nerve agent to treat Mr. To poison Navalny. There is no plausible explanation for Navalny’s poisoning other than the involvement and responsibility of the Russian government, ”a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday.
“Of course President Putin and the Russian government want us to believe otherwise. Russia has proposed numerous, often contradictory, conspiracy theories. Let’s be clear: these kinds of conspiracy theories are nothing more than a means of diverting attention from the serious questions the Russian government has yet to answer. “
The spokesman said the US has “complete confidence” in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ findings in October that toxic chemicals removed from Navalny’s blood and urine were related to the Novichok group.
“The United States has full confidence in the OPCW’s findings, which confirmed previous results from German, French and Swedish laboratories that Mr. Navalny was exposed to an unplanned Novichok nerve agent,” the spokesman said.
The State Department statement comes after the publication of a joint investigation between Navalny, the online media outlet Bellingcat and CNN, which found that an elite unit within the FSB had put the poison in Navalny’s underpants after nearly three years. to have stood in the opposition.
Navalny is currently recovering in Germany, where he was transferred in August from a Russian hospital in Omsk, where he was initially taken for treatment after falling ill on a plane leaving the city of Tomsk.
Navalny is a known thorn in the Russian president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin State Department Says Russian Security Service Behind Navalny Poisoning Doctors Reveal Navalny Symptoms, Treatment in New Article Democracy, History and the Presidential Records Act MOREand has become known for his investigation of corruption by Russian government officials.
Russia has denied responsibility for the attack on Navalny, and Putin in a press conference Thursday rejected allegations that the FSB was involved, although he did say that if they were involved they “most likely would have carried it out.”
The State Department’s statement blaming Moscow is likely to further heighten tensions between the US and Russia, and comes as the Trump administration grapples with an unprecedented cyber hack in multiple agencies that have assigned senior officials to Moscow.