No Novichok here Pro-Kremlin pundit broadcasts from hotel room where Navalny was poisoned to ‘prove’ that it couldn’t have happened there
During Sunday’s episode of his television show Vesti Nedeli, pro-Kremlin pundit and state media executive Dmitry Kiselyov visited the Tomsk hotel where opposition figure Alexey Navalny stayed the night before he became violently ill from severe poisoning. In a bid to prove that Navalny wasn’t poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent, Kiselyov even spent the night in the same hotel room (or so he claims).
In the episode, Kiselyov walks around in a bathrobe, shaves, explains that his wife had no desire to come with him to Tomsk, and counts the number of water bottles in the room. The water bottle count was Kiselyov’s way showing that the hotel only gives out one bottle of water per guest; since Navalny’s team collected three bottles from his room, “it means that the water was brought in” from outside, he concludes.
Read more about Navalny’s hotel in Tomsk
- Navalny’s team reveals hotel room search that uncovered water bottle with traces of Novichok-type poison
- ‘They’ve taken away something important’ Kremlin spokesman suspects Navalny’s team of concealing evidence
- Tomsk hotel managers say they assisted Navalny’s associates after his illness, and Navalny demands return of evidence now that inquiry deadline has passed
The episode was accompanied by an additional report from Salisbury, England, which claimed that the British authorities carefully destroyed all of the items found during the investigation into the Novichok poisoning of ex-spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
Kiselyov makes sense of all of this in his final monologue, recorded back at the studio, where he argues that if Navalny had actually been poisoned with a Novichok-type substance, then there’s no way he would have been able to “calmly” get to the airport and wait for the departure of his flight. Kiselyov also calls for an international investigation with the participation of Russian doctors and insists that Navalny provide a blood sample — otherwise, “there was no poisoning, and the pain and fainting were caused by the intrinsic state of the Berlin patient’s health.” According to Kiselyov, the entire story of Navalny’s poisoning is supposedly a pretense for the introduction of new sanctions against Russia.
Alexey Navalny responded to the segment on Twitter: “I didn’t even wear the robe. If it’s been hanging there since those times, I suggest that Dmitry Kiselyov stop by the pharmacy for atropine,” he said, referring to a common antidote for nerve agent poisoning.
Kiselyov maintains that the absurd plot of the episode filmed in Tomsk was “a kind of experiment,” which should confirm that reports of Navalny’s Novichok poisoning are “complete nonsense.” In a comment to the outlet Podyom, Kiselyov explained that flying to Tomsk was his idea — he wanted to make the poisoning story “even more absurd.”
Read more about Navalny’s poisoning
- Not worth it Russia asks the EU nine questions about Navalny’s poisoning, arguing that he’s too unpopular to warrant assassination and, hey, maybe his own colleagues are responsible
- Technical assistance How Navalny’s poisoning could prompt the OPCW to carry out an emergency inspection in Russia
- Russia’s Foreign Ministry claims Navalny’s poisoning could have been ‘staged’
Navalny’s poisoning
Alexey Navalny was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow when he fell violently ill on August 20. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was hospitalized in a coma; two days later he was transferred to Germany for treatment. On September 2, German officials confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with a substance from the Novichok group of nerve agents. Without revealing its sources, the newspaper Der Spiegel reported that poison traces were found on one of Navalny’s water bottles. Navalny was discharged on September 23, but it is still undergoing rehabilitation in Germany.