DISINFO: Western countries use accusations about Navalny to undermine political stability in Russia before elections

This is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, aiming to deflect any responsibility of the Russian authorities for the incident. The claim was neither counterbalanced nor critically challenged in the article.

Contrary to the claim, Alexei Navalny’s poisoning with a chemical weapon is not a baseless accusation from the West, but a documented fact. There is unequivocal evidence proving that Navalny was poisoned in an assassination attempt, as established by initial clinical findings at the Charité hospital which indicated that he had been intoxicated with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors. Subsequent toxicological tests established the presence of a Novichok-type chemical nerve agent in Navalny's blood.

On 14 December 2020, a special investigation by Bellingcat, the Insider, CNN and Der Spiegel identified members of the Russian FSB unit involved in the attempt on Navalny’s life. According to The New York Times, the report was also consistent with the information on the case gathered by German intelligence services. Bellingcat also provided a detailed account of the methods used to identify the FSB operatives. A week later, on 21 December, Navalny disclosed a recorded conversation in which a member of the suspected FSB poisoning squad describes how his unit carried out, and attempted to clean up evidence of, the poisoning of Alexey Navalny.

See other examples of pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives on Alexei Navalny’s poisoning in our database, such as claims that only caffeine and alcohol were found in his blood, that the US wanted to use it to block Russia's vaccine against coronavirus, that the West hopes that he dies to have an excuse for new sanctions, or that Western accusations on Navalny’s case are as false as they were about Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko.