Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny fell gravely ill in August 2020 while on a return flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. The pilot made an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was taken to hospital for urgent treatment before being transferred to Germany, still critically ill.
The German government said Navalny was poisoned with a chemical agent from the Novichok group, a conclusion supported by two other labs in France and Sweden. Novichok agents are highly unusual, so much so that very few scientists outside of Russia have any real experience in dealing with them.
A subsequent Bellingcat-CNN investigation found that an elite team in Russia’s FSB security service, made up of about six to 10 agents, had trailed Navalny for more than three years. One of those agents revealed in a sting that the lethal nerve agent Novichok had been planted in the activist’s underpants.
Despite these revelations, Navalny said he did not believe there would be an investigation in Russia.
“It has become so obvious that it was Putin personally who was behind this,” he said.
Nonetheless, once mostly recovered, the activist announced his plan to go back to Russia, saying: “There was never a question for me whether to return or not, never.”
