While the mainstream media and the Western governments have already committed themselves to the theory that the liberal Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was allegedly poisoned on behalf of the Kremlin, more and more international experts and politicians are expressing considerable doubts about this version of events.
Navalny was transported from Russia to Berlin for medical treatment on August 22 with symptoms of poisoning. Since then he has been treated at the Charité University Hospital. The German government announced that the Kremlin critic was “without doubt” poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. Chancellor Angela Merkel strongly condemned the “attempted murder by poison” and announced that an “appropriate” reaction would now be decided upon together with EU partners and NATO.
The German regional MP Gunnar Lindemann from the Berlin branch of the Eurosceptic AfD party sees “no big difference between the medical scene in Russia and Germany”. Medicine in Russia is “as good as in Germany”, says Lindemann. The German regional deputy assumes, “it’s just duplicitous propaganda against the Russian government. And I think for Germany it’s not good, because it’s not good for Russian-German relations, because we want to have good relations with Russia, to have some business, buy some resources, such as gas, that’s why it’s so important to us”.
For Lindemann, “Navalny is just a puppet of the US, who is paid by the Soros foundation, Clinton foundation, who paid for his studies. It’s not good to protect such people. The whole situation is just a political case, this is propaganda against Russian people”.
Johan Bäckman, Human Rights defender and associate professor of the University of Helsinki in Finland, too has doubts about the official narrative: “Immediately after the all-Russian vote in early July 2020, the media wrote about the bankruptcy and the closure of the Navalny fund. He had had some problems with funding and sponsors. His fund was a tool for anti-Putin agitation in Russia.”
Bäckman “came to the conclusion, that as a result of the all-Russian vote, as it became clear, Putin could be president until 2036, if that is his and the people’s will. That is, the anti-Putin campaign had lost its meaning. Therefore, immediately after the vote, Navalny’s fund stopped its activity”.
The Finish academic suspects, “that after the closure of his fund, Navalny wanted to leave Russia with the help of Merkel. Therefore, the poisoning could be a staged ‘fake’ in order to leave Russia. Thus, there is a reason for his evacuation – he could not just say ‘I’ve had enough’, ‘I have no funding, I’m leaving’. He couldn’t behave like that”.
Bäckman writes on Facebook: “I do not believe in any poisoning. I see this as a reason to send Navalny abroad. Now he is allegedly persecuted by the Russian authorities and because of that, evacuated to Germany. The information about the persecution and poisoning are completely untrue and fake.”
