Kremlin Spokesman Peskov Counters Insults to President, States Navalny Is a Tool of the CIA
Oct. 1, 2020 (EIRNS)—Alexey Navalny gave his first published interview today, after his hospital stay, to the German weekly Der Spiegel, featuring his bald conclusion: “I assert that Putin is behind this act, I don’t see any other explanation.” Navalny’s eyesight aside, most people, lacking any other explanation, may surmise or propose the one explanation they prefer. Navalny simply asserts.
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Federal Assembly, responded: “Navalny is a shameless and mean man. Everyone—from pilots to doctors to the President—were sincerely saving him. Only a dishonorable man can make such statements. It is absolutely obvious that Navalny is working with the security services and authorities of Western countries,” reported the Duma website. Navalny collapsed into a coma on Aug. 20 aboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The flight diverted to Omsk, where Navalny was put into ICU. On Aug. 22, complex arrangements were made to have him flown to Berlin Charité Hospital.
When the matter was raised at a Kremlin press conference today, spokesman Dmitry Peskov inverted the question, suggesting that Navalny was actually more of a tool than a sovereign actor:
“We believe that such accusations against the Russian President are absolutely unfounded and unacceptable. Probably, it is not the patient who is working with Western security services, it’s Western security services who are working with him—this would be more correct. I can even be specific: These days, specialists from the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America are working with him. This isn’t the first time he’s been given different instructions. The instructions given to the patient are obvious. We have seen such patterns of behavior on more than one occasion,”
TASS quoted him as saying.
Western intelligence agencies have been concerned that President Donald Trump insisted upon examining the actual evidence of poison, instead of rushing to judgment. On Sept. 30, the heads of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined in a bipartisan effort to increase the pressure on Trump. The letter of Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID) and ranking member Bob Menendez (D-NJ) called upon Trump to initiate an investigation: “Mr. Navalny’s poisoning is particularly disturbing as a Novichok agent was also used” in the 2018 Skripal case, after which sanctions were imposed against Russia. “The United States must again make clear that any such behavior is not acceptable.”
As in British Skripal case in March 2018, no evidence has been presented of Novichok poisoning, much less by Russia.
