DISINFO: The Navalny setup may be related to the success of Russia’s space programme
SUMMARY
The Navalny case strongly brings to mind the case of Skripal, which was also a clumsy setup. There are geostrategical interests in place, not only the Nord Stream pipeline but also Russia’s spectacular advances in creating a vaccine against Covid-19, and the launching of the Soyuz, which reached the international station in three hours, which reminds us of the Soviet advances in this field and the old competition with the US. This time, Russia overcame all the other players in providing supplies for the international space station.
RESPONSE
This is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which follows the same playbook as the one deployed after the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018, a case where there is strong evidence of the involvement of Russian intelligence operatives and high-level Russian officials. Since the use of a chemical nerve agent of the Novichok group against Navalny has been established beyond any doubt by a specialist Bundeswehr laboratory, the claim that the Navalny case was a setup is false, and even more the affirmation that it may be related to the recent successes of Russia’s space programme.
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 on Navalny’s case are as false as they were about Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko.
This disinformation message appeared in the same programme than the claims that “The CIA may be behind the Navalny case, as John Brennan’s tweets show” and “NATO countries improved and used Novichok”