Western scheme to make Navalny ‘sacrificial victim’ failed, says intelligence chief - TASS

The operation carried out by Western intelligence, which wanted to turn Russian blogger Alexey Navalny into a "sacrificial victim" has fallen flat on its face and now they are looking for another figurehead to represent the Russian ‘protest movement’, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin told the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper on Wednesday.

According to Naryshkin, in recent years, the Western intelligence services and other government agencies have lost their interest in the possibility of stirring up a mass protest movement in Russia. "The case of the Berlin patient, that you have mentioned, not the least of which, played a role here," the chief of the intelligence service said. "It is obvious that the operation to turn the blogger into a ‘sacrificial victim’ has failed. The Russian public has proven to be way more prudent and sensible than Western political strategists arrogantly used to think."

Naryshkin emphasized that the US and EU intelligence community must confess that public interest in Navalny has been steadily on the decline. "I would say more - they already want to replace him as a symbol of Russia’s protest movement," he noted.

The intelligence chief pointed out that the West had not yet provided any comprehensible explanations on how the traces of a chemical appeared in Navalny’s lab results after he was sent to Berlin. "As you know, no such traces had been found following all the thorough medical examinations conducted by Russian doctors before the blogger left Russia," Naryshkin went on to say.

"Therefore, a legitimate point exists. When, where and how was it possible to poison a Russian citizen after boarding a plane in Omsk? Are those accompanying the blogger involved in this? We are counting on [our] Western colleagues to clarify this situation."

Alexey Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20, 2020, after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. He fell into a coma and was hooked up to a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital. On September 2, the German government claimed that the blogger had been exposed to a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Russia’s authorities pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin and repeatedly expressed readiness for sweeping cooperation to investigate this case.