Alexei Navalny Accuses Putin of Ordering Novichok Attack

“I imagine Putin is individually guiding the assault on me,” he mentioned on his web-site on Thursday.

The statement arrived hrs after a German magazine released Mr. Navalny’s to start with account of the activities encompassing his poisoning in late August.

“I will not give Putin the reward of not returning to Russia,” Mr. Navalny told Der Spiegel in the interview released Thursday. “I do not want to be an opposition chief in exile.”

Mr. Navalny’s poisoning has spotlighted Russia’s political opposition and the troubles it has faced beneath Mr. Putin’s twenty-year rule, and threatens to develop into a further geopolitical flashpoint in relations in between Moscow and the West.

Professionals in Germany, France and Sweden have mentioned Mr. Navalny was poisoned—a conclusion disputed by the Kremlin. Western governments have pushed Moscow to open an investigation into Mr. Navalny’s sickness, but Moscow has refused to do so right up until authorities in Germany, wherever he was flown for procedure when comatose, share extra proof.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned Mr. Navalny’s accusation was unfounded and unacceptable.

“We want to investigate what took place, but to do that we have to have extra facts,” Mr. Peskov told reporters at a briefing Thursday. He mentioned Mr. Navalny was probably working with Western intelligence, a claim often leveled at the opposition politician.

Mr. Navalny ridiculed the comments on his web-site Thursday.

“My to start with reaction was a wholesome child’s giggle,” he mentioned, adding that he would file a lawsuit against Mr. Peskov and desire that the Kremlin publishes proof of his alleged “work with CIA experts.”

Recounting the past minutes just before he fell unconscious to the German magazine, Mr. Navalny mentioned he felt no suffering but was confident he was dying. He mentioned his times now consist of walks in a Berlin park, physiotherapy and investing time on social media in the evening.

When requested why he was poisoned, he mentioned he believed the house for political dissent has shrunk to these kinds of an extent in Russia that poison, a device once reserved for traitors, could be employed against a legit opposition determine.

Mr. Navalny mentioned the Kremlin wanted to crack down on its domestic enemies after anti-Kremlin protests erupted in Russia’s Considerably East in July and are even now ongoing.

Mr. Putin is also troubled by large antigovernment street protests in Belarus against his ally, President Alexander Lukashenko, pursuing disputed elections in August, analysts have mentioned. The past matter Mr. Putin needs is for an authoritarian chief in his yard to be toppled by the kind of persons ability that Mr. Navalny is capable of rallying, they mentioned.

“Something in Putin’s head has transformed,” the opposition chief mentioned. “The actuality has transformed.”

Generate to Thomas Grove at [email protected]