The State Department on Wednesday blamed Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, as the backbone of the near-deadly attack on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny that was taken by nerve agent Novichok , in a forceful indictment against Moscow.
“The United States believes that Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents used a nerve agent from Novichok to poison Mr. Navalny. There is no plausible explanation for Mr Navalny’s poisoning other than the involvement and responsibility of the Russian government, ”a State Department spokesman said in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday.
“Of course, President Putin and the Russian government want us to believe otherwise. Russia has suggested numerous conspiracy theories, often contradictory. Let’s be clear: such conspiracy theories are nothing more than a means of diverting attention from serious questions to the Russian government to which it has not yet responded. “
The spokesman said the United States has “full confidence” in the findings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in October that the toxic chemicals extracted from Navalny’s blood and urine were related to the Novichok group.
“The United States has full confidence in the OPCW findings, which confirmed previous results from German, French and Swedish laboratories, that Mr Navalny was exposed to an unscheduled Novichok nerve agent,” the spokesman said.
The State Department statement comes after the publication of a joint investigation between Navalny, the online media outlet Bellingcat and CNN, which revealed that an elite unit within the FSB placed the poison in their underpants. of Navalny after pursuing the figure of the opposition for almost three years.
Navalny is currently recovering in Germany, where he was transferred in August from a Russian hospital in Omsk, where he was initially taken for treatment after falling ill on a plane leaving the city of Tomsk.
Navalny is a notable thorn in the side of the Russian president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich, Putin’s State Department says Russian security agency behind Navalny poisoning Doctors reveal symptoms of Navalny, treatment in a new article Democracy, history and the Presidential Records Acthas gained notoriety for its investigations into corruption by Russian government officials.
Russia has denied being responsible for the attack on Navalny and Putin dismissed at a press conference on Thursday the allegations implicated by the FSB, although he said that if they were involved “they probably would have carried it out”.
The State Department statement blaming Moscow is likely to further escalate tensions between the United States and Russia, and comes when the Trump administration faces unprecedented cyber piracy at multiple agencies that senior officials have assigned. to Moscow.