One of the Russian agents who followed opposition leader Alexei Navalny before he was poisoned in August was tricked into revealing details of the operation in a phone conversation with Navalny himself, CNN reported on Monday.
Konstantin Kudryavtsev, the agent who belonged to an elite toxins team in Russia's Federal Security Service, apparently thought he was speaking to an official in Russia's National Security Council, but instead was talking to Navalny himself, who almost died in the operation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that his government didn't have any role in the poisoning, but a joint probe by CNN and the investigative outfit Bellingcat last week uncovered "voluminous telecom and travel data" that suggests the poisoning "was mandated at the highest echelons of the Kremlin."
Navalny has been a long-time nemesis to Putin by revealing corruption in the Russian power structure and campaigning against the ruling United Russia party, according to Axios.
The audio recordings of the phone conversation were provided by Navalny to CNN and Bellingcat, revealing that the toxins team applied Novichok to Navalny's underpants so it would be absorbed through his skin when he began to sweat.
Navalny began to feel unwell on a flight to Moscow from the Russian city of Tomsk, and the aircraft made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he received medical treatment that saved his life.
Experts told CNN that Navalny would have most probably died if he had flown all the way to Moscow before being treated.
Kudryavtsev said agents used a special procedure to cleanse Navalny's clothes of any traces of Novichok, saying in the phone call that "They treated it with solutions … so there wouldn't be any marks there."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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