Russia’s Putin Dismisses Kremlin’s Part in Navalny Poisoning

Mr. Putin presented no proof for his assertions.

Mr. Navalny has accused Mr. Putin of ordering his poisoning. The European Union in October sanctioned some of Russia’s top political figures with a travel ban and an asset freeze in reaction to Mr. Navalny’s assault.

Previously this year, Mr. Navalny shed consciousness when touring on a commercial flight from Siberia to Moscow. Immediately after he was evacuated to Berlin, European doctors stated traces of a Soviet-era nerve agent, referred to as Novichok, had been observed in his procedure, adding one more flashpoint in presently poisonous relations among Russia and the West.

Mr. Putin explained Thursday that intelligence officers must have been subsequent Mr. Navalny across the region and, without having mentioning him by identify, repeated an allegation extended asserted with out evidence in professional-Kremlin circles that the opposition determine was an agent of the West.

Mr. Putin’s accusations added to a extensive listing of grievances the Russian chief has aired against Washington in advance of President-elect

Joe Biden’s

inauguration.

“This individual of a Berlin clinic has the guidance of unique forces, in this circumstance of the U.S. And if which is true then, that is curious, then [Russian] particular forces ought to be pursuing him,” Mr. Putin claimed.

Mr. Navalny obtained wide reputation in Russia in current decades for criticizing Mr. Putin personally in road protests. He also aired investigations of corruption and wealth amid the Kremlin elite that stoked anger amongst his thousands and thousands of on the web followers.

The Russian chief dismissed allegations that Russia was behind the assault on Mr. Navalny. The Kremlin has denied its involvement considering that Mr. Navalny’s workforce organized its individual investigation into how he out of the blue fell unwell and explained German lab success confirmed drinking water bottles from Mr. Navalny’s resort place in Siberia indicated he was probably poisoned there.

The Kremlin suggests that medical practitioners in Omsk, Russia, wherever Mr. Navalny was hospitalized just before his evacuation to Germany, uncovered no traces of poison and that he could have been suffering from a metabolic imbalance, akin to a low-blood-sugar attack.

Mr. Navalny, who is even now in Germany, mentioned authorities there had been questioning him at the behest of Moscow, which experienced submitted queries in link to what befell the activist.

Mr. Putin’s reviews were being component of a wide salvo from the West through his yr-close information conference, in which he typically addresses a spectrum of difficulties, from international plan to domestic complications. This year it centered on the reaction to the coronavirus in Russia, which has registered just about 2.8 bacterial infections nationwide.

Questions posed by journalists throughout the region through videoconference included considerations more than social and financial worries inflicted by the pandemic and regardless of whether Russia would be equipped to generate adequate doses of its Sputnik-V vaccine to fulfill its mass-immunization targets. Mr. Putin stated tens of millions of doses of the vaccine would be made in Russia at the beginning of next calendar year.

On the overseas coverage front, the Kremlin chief mentioned he hoped that an administration underneath Mr. Biden would resolve a number of issues in U.S.-Russian relations, but he blamed Washington for what he termed a continuing arms race right after the U.S. pulled out of quite a few bilateral arms manage treaties, together with under President Trump.

Produce to Thomas Grove at [email protected]