Moscow Court rejects Navalny’s lawsuit against Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov

Moscow’s Presnensky District Court has dismissed opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s defamation lawsuit against Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov. 

The case record on the court’s website says “not pursued.” In conversation with Interfax, the Presnensky District Court’s press service declined to comment on why the court dismissed the case.

Navalny filed the defamation suit against Peskov on November 16. He asked the court to acknowledge Peskov’s claims about Navalny working with “CIA specialists” as untrue. 

The Kremlin spokesman accused Navalny of working with Western intelligence agencies on October 1, saying specifically that Navalny was cooperating with the CIA. This came in response to an interview published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, in which Navalny said that he holds Vladimir Putin directly responsible for the nerve-agent attack that nearly killed him in August .