Moscow court rejects Alexey Navalny’s libel suit against the Kremlin’s spokesman

Moscow’s Presnensky District Court rejected Alexey Navalny’s libel lawsuit against Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, Interfax reported on August 10, citing the court’s press service.

The jailed opposition politician attempted to take Putin’s spokesman to court for alleging that Navalny was working with specialists from the CIA. Peskov made this claim in October 2020. At the time, Navalny was in Germany, recovering from chemical nerve agent poisoning. 

Navalny initially filed the lawsuit in November of last year, but the court returned it to him to address gaps in the claim. He filed the lawsuit again in March 2021.

In October 2020, Navalny told the German newspaper Der Spiegel that he holds Vladimir Putin directly responsible for the nerve-agent attack that nearly killed him in August of that year. Following the interview’s publication, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called Navalny a “shameless bastard” and claimed the opposition figure is in fact a Western intelligence operative.

In comments to journalists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later accused Alexey Navalny of cooperating with CIA specialists. Peskov also said the oppositonist’s claim that Vladimir Putin is to blame for his poisoning is “absolutely baseless and unacceptable.”