DISINFO: Alexei Navalny, originally an anti-Russian project, was poisoned by his sponsors
SUMMARY
Alexei Navalny is an expensive and long-term project. I do not know who and when decided to include Alexei Navalny on the [Russian] political agenda. Yes, this is probably not important now, since we have the opportunity to observe the end of the project. Navalny was very quickly brought into the big game in order to exclude Russia from an even more global game – the battle for Belarus. Everyone, both those who have invested a lot of money into this person from abroad for many years and those who saw him as a real leader and future president of Russia, understands now that spending more money on him is useless.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory. Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Alexei Navalny alleging that he was sponsored by anti-Russian forces, while also deflecting the news agenda away from responsibility for his poisoning. Alexei Navalny is a key Russian opposition politician and an anti-corruption activist. He is a founder and a leader of the "Anti-Corruption Foundation" ("Fond Boriby s Korrypciey"), where he uncovered the life of Russian politicians and businessmen close to the government, different corruption practices, etc. He ran in in the Moscow mayoral elections in 2013 and came second. He claimed election fraud but still lost the elections. In 2018, he was campaigning for the Presidency of Russia but the Central Electoral Commission barred him from participation. The Russian government detained him multiple times and prosecuted for different criminal and administrative offences. Alexey Navalny fell ill during a flight and his plane to make an emergency landing in Omsk, where doctors said he was in a coma and they were trying to save his life. Since then he has been transferred to Berlin and is receiving treatment at Berlin's Charite Hospital. The German federal government said that toxicological tests provided “unequivocal evidence of a chemical nerve agent of the Novichok group” in the blood samples of Alexei Navalny. The European Union condemned poisoning of Alexei Navalny in the strongest possible terms. Read similar disinformation messages alleging that the West has an interest in the death of Navalny to launch a new wave of sanctions against Russia, that only traces of alcohol and caffeine were found in Navalny's blood, that the West will falsely accuse Russia of poisoning Navalny, as with Skripal and Litvinenko or that US used Navalny case to block Russian vaccine against COVID-19.