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Russian opposition leader Navalny says agent admits poison was put in his underwear

WION Web Team
New Delhi, Delhi, IndiaUpdated: Dec 21, 2020, 09:08 PM IST
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FILE Photograph:(Reuters)

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'I called my killer. He confessed everything,' Navalny wrote on Twitter

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny claimed on Monday that he tricked a spy agent into confessing that Novichok was applied on his underwear to poison him. 

"I called my killer. He confessed everything," Navalny wrote on Twitter.

Navalny in a blog post revealed how he disguised himself as an aide to Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev when he called Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a member of Russia's domestic spy agency FSB. 

He convinced the agent that he was an aide of FSB general and wanted an official report on the attempted poisoning. 

Other than the blog post, Navalny also released an audio recording and a transcript of the call. 

The alleged conversation took place hours after Bellingcat, an investigative website, released the details of Russian agents that were involved in the poisoning. 
 
Kudryavtsev told Navalny that agent's colleagues had applied novichok to the "inner seams" of the latter's boxer shorts in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

The Russian opposition leader's health worsened suddenly in a flight from Siberia to Moscow in August.

He was initially hospitalised in the Russian city of Omsk before being shited to Berlin for treatment. 

Following the report by Bellingcat, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that if he wanted, Navalny would be dead by now.