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Highly detailed article. Well worth the read.
We have detailed the research methodology for this investigation into a separate article. You can read it here.
- In a previous series of investigations, Bellingcat uncovered evidence that Russia’s military intelligence agency – the GRU – was responsible for both the Novichok poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal in the U.K. (an assassination attempt that led to the death of one British citizen) and the poisoning of Emilian Gebrev in Bulgaria. We also determined that Russia’s principal security agency – the FSB – was behind the assassination of a Georgian asylum seeker on German soil.
- In a further joint investigation, Bellingcat uncovered evidence that Russia has not terminated its chemical weapons program, but has instead disguised its development capability behind a network of state-run institutes. Following the official closure of Russia’s military-run chemical weapons program in 2010, its core scientists were rehired by institutes which engage in ostensibly civilian research. In reality, these scientists continued to provide chemical weapons development and manufacturing support to Russia’s security services.
- We identified two institutes which since 2010 appear to have taken the lead role in the continued R&D of Soviet-era nerve-agent programs, including those of the Novichok type. These institutes – the St Petersburg-based GNII VM and the Moscow-based SC Signal – were shown to have been in close communication with GRU operatives linked to the two overseas assassination attempts using military-grade toxins. SC Signal, formally engaged in developing sports nutrition drinks, appears to have focused research into nano-encapsulation; a relatively new technology that could permit a lethal toxin to be “packaged” within a veneer of another substance, allowing both obfuscation and delayed onset of the poison.
- On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny collapsed into a coma during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, resulting in an emergency landing and his hospitalization in the town of Omsk. Local doctors and medical specialists flown in from Moscow claimed that they found no signs of severe poisoning. Two days later, Navalny was evacuated to the German Charite hospital where he was promptly diagnosed with severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor. A German military laboratory, two independent European labs and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) all identified the toxin as a nerve agent belonging to the Novichok group. The OPCW identified the toxin as a cholinesterase inhibitor structurally resembling the known Novichok variants, but one that was not included in the list of banned nerve agents updated after the Skripal poisoning in 2018. This implied that the agent used on Navalny was of a more recent, previously unknown type.
- The U.S. and European governments have blamed the Russian government, and in particular the FSB, for Navalny’s near-fatal poisoning. Russia has repeatedly denied the accusation and claims that the opposition figure had no traces of nerve agents in his body while in Russia, and that if he was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent, this must have happened after he left Russian territory.
- No law enforcement agency in any country is currently investigating the poisoning of Alexey Navalny.
