Russia’s Foreign Ministry claims Navalny’s poisoning could have been ‘staged’

Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry says that “discrepancies and inconsistencies” in the situation surrounding opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s poisoning indicate that it could have been “staged.”

“Germany’s actions were so well-coordinated that a lot of questions started to surface about whether we are dealing with another staged mystical use of chemical weapons, though now not in Syria and the UK, but in Russia,” the ministry said in a comment on Friday, September 25.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, indications that the poisoning was staged include “the immediate involvement at the highest level with requests to expeditiously take the blogger to Germany for treatment,” as well as the “involvement in the situation of the top military and political leadership, declaring that the aforementioned ‘patient’ was their ‘guest’.” 

Russian opposition politician and anti-corruption activist 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 had been poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent. On September 7, Navalny’s doctors brought him out of his coma. He was discharged on September 23, and is still undergoing rehabilitation in Germany.