Navalny Reportedly Dupes Agent Into Revealing Details Of Poisoning

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Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny reportedy duped Russian agent Konstantin Kudryavtsev to reveal details about his own poisoning in August.

Navalny instagram account/AP

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Navalny instagram account/AP

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A video from Bellingcat translated the call between Navalny and Kudryavtsev. A second video from Navalny’s YouTube channel, viewed more than 11 million times, further broke down the communications between the two. The authenticity of the call in the videos has yet to be independently verified.

Navalny says he used phone numbers from the Bellingcat investigation to contact Kudryavtsev, disguising his own number as coming from a landline within the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor organization to the Cold War KGB spy agency.

In August, after falling ill while aboard a plane ride en route from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny was evacuated to Germany, where he is still recovering. Kudryavtsev said during the call that had it not been for the pilot’s emergency stop so that Navanly could receive medical attention, Navalny would probably be dead.

If the call is authentic, Kudryavtsev also implicated the local Omsk transport police. He said he was sent to the Siberian city following the plane’s emergency stop. Omsk officers handed the group of Russian agents Navalny’s belongings where they then removed traces of the poison, so that no one from Navalny’s camp could take the clothes and get them tested.

President Vladimir Putin has denied Navalny was poisoned and says had the FSB been behind the attack, Navalny would be dead. He did say, however, that the FSB is right to follow the opposition politician, claiming Navalny poses a threat to national security.

Following publication of the call’s recording, Russia’s Federal Security Service called it «a provocation that couldn’t have been made without the help of foreign spies.

NPR’s Moscow correspondent Lucian Kim contributed to this report.