The Kremlin has described Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as “delusional” after he released a recording of a phone call in which he duped an intelligence officer into revealing details of an alleged bid to kill him.
Russia also announced that it would apply travel bans to more European Union officials in response to sanctions imposed on Moscow over the alleged assassination attempt against Mr Navalny, who fell into a coma on August 20th during a flight from Siberia to the Russian capital.
Amid desperate appeals from his family and under international pressure, Russia allowed Mr Navalny to be evacuated to Germany, where experts found that he had been poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent. Labs in France, Sweden and at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed the findings.
On Tuesday, Mr Navalny released audio of a conversation with Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an alleged toxins expert at Russia’s FSB security service, who is heard explaining to the anti-corruption campaigner how he was tasked with “processing” his clothes to ensure that all incriminating chemical traces were removed.
Delusions of grandeur
In the belief that he is talking to a colleague, Mr Kudryavtsev also says that he thinks the operation “failed” because the plane made an emergency landing at Omsk airport and medics quickly gave Mr Navalny life-saving treatment.
“Overall you can say, of course, that the patient has a pronounced persecution complex . . . and delusions of grandeur,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
“The rest are Freudian manifestations, this fixation with his own crotch and so on,” added Mr Peskov, in reference to Mr Kudryavtsev’s comment that he gave special attention to removing any traces of evidence from Mr Navalny’s underpants.
The detail quickly became a meme, as the video of the conversation was viewed more than 13 million times in 24 hours on YouTube. Renowned Russian film director Vitaly Mansky was detained on Wednesday while standing outside the Lyubyanka, FSB headquarters in Moscow, holding a pair of blue boxer shorts.
The FSB, which Russian president Vladimir Putin led before becoming president, called Mr Navalny’s video a “provocation” made with “support from foreign special services”.
“This is an attempt to discredit, but of course such attempts cannot discredit” the FSB, Mr Peskov insisted.
Terrorism
He said the agency “plays a very important role, protecting us all from terrorism, extremism, various mortal dangers and, of course, it performs this role very well and very effectively”.
Investigative website Bellingcat and other media, with the support of Mr Navalny, recently identified FSB officers involved in alleged operations against him in a report that Mr Putin said last week was based on “material from US intelligence”.
“If this is true, and I assure you it is, then it means that [Navalny] is supported by secret services, in this case from the US. And if that’s the case, then it’s curious, and it means the [Russian] secret services must keep an eye on him,” he added.
“But it doesn’t mean he should be poisoned. Who needs him? If they had wanted to, they would probably have finished the job.”
