Alexei Navalny Accuses Putin of Ordering Novichok Attack

“I believe Putin is individually driving the attack on me,” he said on his web page on Thursday.

The statement arrived hours just after a German magazine printed Mr. Navalny’s very first account of the gatherings bordering his poisoning in late August.

“I will not give Putin the reward of not returning to Russia,” Mr. Navalny instructed Der Spiegel in the job interview printed Thursday. “I do not want to be an opposition chief in exile.”

Mr. Navalny’s poisoning has spotlighted Russia’s political opposition and the challenges it has confronted under Mr. Putin’s 20-12 months rule, and threatens to develop into yet another geopolitical flashpoint in relations between Moscow and the West.

Industry experts in Germany, France and Sweden have said Mr. Navalny was poisoned—a conclusion disputed by the Kremlin. Western governments have pushed Moscow to open up an investigation into Mr. Navalny’s illness, but Moscow has refused to do so right up until authorities in Germany, in which he was flown for remedy when comatose, share extra proof.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Mr. Navalny’s accusation was unfounded and unacceptable.

“We want to investigate what took place, but to do that we need extra information and facts,” Mr. Peskov instructed reporters at a briefing Thursday. He said Mr. Navalny was probably operating with Western intelligence, a declare often leveled at the opposition politician.

Mr. Navalny ridiculed the remarks on his web page Thursday.

“My very first reaction was a wholesome child’s chuckle,” he said, including that he would file a lawsuit in opposition to Mr. Peskov and demand from customers that the Kremlin publishes proof of his alleged “work with CIA professionals.”

Recounting the very last minutes ahead of he fell unconscious to the German magazine, Mr. Navalny said he felt no discomfort but was convinced he was dying. He said his days now consist of walks in a Berlin park, physiotherapy and shelling out time on social media in the night.

When requested why he was poisoned, he said he believed the space for political dissent has shrunk to such an extent in Russia that poison, a device after reserved for traitors, could be employed in opposition to a legitimate opposition figure.

Mr. Navalny said the Kremlin wanted to crack down on its domestic enemies just after anti-Kremlin protests erupted in Russia’s Far East in July and are continue to ongoing.

Mr. Putin is also troubled by enormous antigovernment street protests in Belarus in opposition to his ally, President Alexander Lukashenko, pursuing disputed elections in August, analysts have said. The very last point Mr. Putin needs is for an authoritarian chief in his backyard to be toppled by the kind of persons electrical power that Mr. Navalny is able of rallying, they said.

“Something in Putin’s head has altered,” the opposition chief said. “The reality has altered.”

Produce to Thomas Grove at [email protected]