DISINFO: Attack on Navalny was a false flag operation, just as the Skripal affair
SUMMARY
The attack on Russian opposition member Alexei Navalny was a false flag operation whose lies were quickly exposed, forcing its authors to invent new arguments to cover them. As with the supposed attempt on the life of the MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal, this incident is a false flag operation to foment western hostility and sanctions against Moscow.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory not based in any evidence, aiming to deny any involvement of Russian authorities in the incident, as the use of a chemical nerve agent of the Novichok group against Russian dissident Alexei Navalny suggests. The presence of Novichok in Navalny’s body was established beyond any doubt by a specialist Bundeswehr laboratory. This is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign on the poisoning of Navalny, which follows the same playbook that the one deployed after the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daugther in Salisbury in 2018, a case where there is strong evidence of the involvement of Russian intelligence operatives and high-level Russian officials. By claiming that is the US and not Russia who benefits from this incident, pro-Kremlin media are trying to deflect any Russian responsibility for it, a frequent Kremlin tactic. Also, the use of multiple and simultaneous versions of an event involving questionable actions by the Russian government or its allies, in order to confound citizens about the actual truth, is a recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation strategy, already seen in the cases of the MH17 downing, the illegal annexation of Crimea, the murder attempt against the Skripals or chemical attacks in Syria. See other examples of pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives on Alexei Navalny’s poisoning in our database, such as claims that only caffeine and alcohol were found in his blood, that the US wanted to use it to block Russia's vaccine against coronavirus, that the West hopes that he dies to have an excuse for new sanctions, or that Western accusations about Navalny’s case are as false as they were about Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko. This disinformation message appeared in the same article as the claim that “To the West, Navalny is more valuable dead than alive as a propaganda tool” and that “The Germans invented the bottle with Novichok to hide that they contaminated Navalny’s body fluids in Berlin”