The whole point of using biological weapons like these is that it's almost impossible to prove that poisoning actually took a place. No one would ever find out for sure if he would die and only reason he still alive is few lucky conditions.
In his earlier investigation video Navalny himself told about two previous cases where he and his wife was likely almost killed, but they never suppose it was poisoning since it's impossible to understand it unless you actually dying. Only now they found out that the same FSB agents followed them on the trips earlier where they became sick with no reason.
The reason his regime uses methods like Novichok and polonium poisoning is because he wants to send a message along with killing. He's always going to deny doing it even when it's obvious that he did.
Of course they do. As individuals, the people at the top are always virtually powerless without support.
This is why dictators always take control of their country's media and spin a narrative that makes them seem innocent, heroes, or victims of foreign intervention.
If no one had any means to hold them to account they wouldn't bother doing any of this, nor would they bother to spy on, much less assassinate any opposition figures, and their acts would be a lot more brazen, without any attempts to disguise them or feign innocence.
Russia has had multiple revolutions in the last century, not to mention constant power struggles within the government itself.
Anyone in power in Russia is going to be keenly aware of this, and know how important it is to keep public opinion on their side and crush any opposition.
Obviously it's just my view, but to give you an example. Nemtsov was one of old Russian political leader who been neither popular nor real danger to regime end up just shoot right in front of Kremlin. And it's caused a lot of backslash and place of his death is still PITA for Putin regime.
Navalny is more popular by two orders of magnitude at least. On top of that everyone know that he's being watched literally 24/7. If he die in suspicios car accident or something like that it's might actually trigger a lot of bad things or might finally put some real beneficiaries of regime (like oligarchs, kids and other family members) under sanctions.
It's not that hard to get someone killed in Russia, but really this is not Stalin's totalitarian country and no one want risk losing all their capital and property in western countries. On other side anyone can die of heart attack during flight and it's impossibly hard to prove it was poisoning afterwards.
It seems like for them to get away with the Novichok poisoning they should've chosen to assassinate Navalny locally so they're be little chance of getting the victim to a neutral location for treatment or autopsy.
That's just my speculation, ultimately this whole situation could be explained by malice and incompetence.
I've read your post and realized that, though not affiliated with the country in any way, even I know a few Putin's opponents who died somewhat unexpectedly. A blogger Anton Nosik comes to mind. Can it be that killings are more common than we think?
Schekochikhin, Kara-Murza poisoning. Zhvaniya in Georgia. Yuschenko, Babchenko, Sheremet in Ukraine. Berezovsky, Perepelichny, Patarkatsishvili, Skripals, Litvinenko in UK. Tsepov, Manevitch in Putin's native Saint Petersbourg. Nemtsov, Politkovskaya, Navalny in Russia.
Also some bad guys, like Khattab, who was killed via poisoned letter.
By no means it's an exhaustive list.
Not Nosik, though. He was a well-known addict and kind of had it coming, so there's no commonly shared suspicion around this.
Imagine how many things should have gone right for him if his plan all along was to let people know he was behind the assassination:
- Navalny had to survive the poisoning or die under very suspicious circumstances — something that couldn't be attributed to, say, anaphylaxis.
- His relatives had to request that he be transported to a country that had the capability for testing for those substances, and the permission given. Alternatively, had he died, someone should have requested for an independent forensic examination in such a country.
- The discovery of novichok poisoning shouldn't have triggered any sanctions from the Western countries, specifically there shouldn't have been any consequences for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. I don't think anyone would argue that sanctions against Russia are somehow in Putin's interest.
This is the level of sophistication in planning and execution that nobody, let alone Russians, is likely capable of.
I don't get the obvoius connection to the government. Surely there are alot of potential perpetrators.
"ChEIs may be used as drugs for Alzheimer's and myasthenia gravis, and also as chemical weapons and insecticides." - Wiki on the poison.
Absolutely. This was in fact how a couple of other opposition figures, such as Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov, were eliminated. This whole cloak-and-dagger pantomime involving chemical weapons is hard to explain, unless what they wanted was a seemingly natural death that was not traceable directly to Kremlin.
Actually, part of this agent's orders was to scrub the underwear clean after the poisoning. It was public knowledge that Putin was trailing this guy, but I believe they wanted to keep it unknown that they tried to assassinate him.