Russia Charges NATO Countries Work with Top Navalny Aides To Plan Subversions Against Putin

Feb. 9 , 2021 (EIRNS)—In a Facebook posting today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova charged that an online meeting yesterday organized by Poland’s EU mission in Brussels, including two top aides to Russian “dissident” Alexey Navalny, as well as representatives of the EU, the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Ukraine, was in fact a gathering of NATO countries to deliver “instructions” to the Navalny crew on how to carry out subversive activities against the government of President Vladimir Putin. Zakharova elaborated further in statements to Vesti FB Radio that the fact that EU or U.S. sanctions or other reprisals against Russia were discussed in yesterday’s meeting with Navalny’s supporters is, in moral and ethical terms, a “betrayal of Russia”—an effort to enforce Russia’s containment.

“Everything is pretty simple,” Zakharova said. The Feb. 8 meeting organized by Poland’s permanent mission to the EU “held an online meeting” involving Navalny lieutenants Leonid Volkov and Vladimir Ashurkov, together with representatives of the named countries. “In fact, it was a meeting of the NATO countries. They gave instructions to the ‘opposition’ members—who are actually their agents of influence—on how they should be more cunning in their future subversive activities.” So, she concluded, “there you go, this is what our so-called Western partners are doing, thereby continuing their absolutely illegal, wrongful and aggressive offensive against us,” TASS quoted her as saying.

Zakharova knows whereof she speaks. As reported in today’s EIR Daily Alert, it was Vladimir Ashurkov who met in 2012 with a suspected agent of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency at the British embassy to request large sums of money precisely to finance such subversive activities. That meeting has publicized by RT on Feb. 1. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman today said that the Navalny agents’ meeting yesterday likely explains why they have backtracked on their original Feb. 4 announcement that they would put off any further unauthorized rallies until spring. Now, according to Leonid Volkov, a nighttime protest action is planned for Feb. 14. “The West has invested too much money and resources into this to put everything off for the spring,” Zakharova explained. “They realize that the West-fueled information campaign will die out by the spring. They can no longer take advantage of the chemical weapons issue without providing evidence, so they are ready to go to the limit” with some new actions.