Navalny says tricked FSB agent into admitting poisoning

MOSCOW: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny claimed on Monday he had tricked a security agent into admitting the FSB domestic intelligence agency sought to kill him this summer and placed poison into his underwear.

In a bombshell blog post the Kremlin critic said he called a man called Konstantin Kudryavtsev, claiming he was a chemical weapons expert with the Federal Security Service. "I called my killer. He confessed everything," Navalny said on Twitter.

Navalny said he disguised his phone number and presented himself as an aide to Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, explaning he needed information for an official report on the attempted poisoning.

He did not provide any proof of his claims, saying a voice analysis "would demonstrate that it is indeed" Kudryavtsev. Apart from the blog post the opposition leader published an audio recording and a transcript of the phone call and released a video of him conducting the conversation.

In the audio recording, the voice initially sounds hesitant and cautious but eventually justifies why Navalny managed to survive. Navalny, 44, fell violently ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow in August and was hospitalised in the Russian city of Omsk before being transported to Berlin by medical aircraft.

A joint media report led by the Bellingcat investigative website last week revealed what it said were the names and photos of chemical weapons experts from the FSB that had tailed Navalny for years.

President Vladimir Putin last week rejected the report, saying if Russia’s security services were behind Navalny’s poisoning he would be dead. In his blog post on Monday, Navalny said that last week he called the security agents identified in the report. He said nearly all hung up on him except the man he said was Kudryavtsev.