"The poisoning had to be approved by the Kremlin"

Russian opposition Leonid Volkov, in front of the German parliament, this Friday.Ana Carbajosa

Leonid Volkov (Yekaterinburg, 39 years old) is a Russian opposition politician and right-hand man of Alexei Navalni, the arch-enemy of the Kremlin, in a coma after being poisoned with a nerve agent, according to the German government.

Navalni lies in a Berlin hospital, half a kilometer from the headquarters of EL PAÍS, where the interview with Volkov takes place, who says he has no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind the attempted assassination of the famous anti-corruption activist .

Volkov is in charge of the political operations of the Navalni platform and has lived outside Russia for a year, after his foundation was accused of money laundering by a

campaign

.

In an hour-long conversation, together with the daily

, Volkov calls for an independent investigation into the Navalni case and rejects possible sanctions, which he believes would only fuel propaganda and official victimhood.

Question.

You accuse the Kremlin of having poisoned Navalni.

What makes you so confident?

Reply.

It is the principle of the duck.

If it looks like a duck, it walks like a duck and swims like a duck, it is a duck.

Putin is the country's first politician and Navalni the second.

Navalni collapses on a flight during the electoral campaign, three weeks before the elections;

it's very suspicious.

From the beginning, the doctors who treated him as soon as he got off the plane in Siberia were also clear that he had been poisoned and applied the antidote, otherwise he would not have survived.

Now the Germans have confirmed that it is Novichok.

It is not something that can be bought in a supermarket, it is a prohibited military poison that only the Government has access to.

Q.

Why would Putin use a poison that bears his signature from the

?

A.

The idea is that it would have seemed like a death from unknown causes, but a series of circumstances occurred.

If there had been no international pressure and he had not been transferred to Germany, we would not have known that it was Novichok or that Putin was behind it.

Q.

There are analysts who say that all kinds of criminals have had access to the Novichok.

R.

As we speak, the Interior Ministry has just said that they are not going to open a criminal investigation.

They cover it up all the time.

The Kremlin does not say that someone poisoned him and that they do not know who.

What they say is that there was not a poisoning, but a metabolic problem.

That speaks for itself.

Q.

Do you think that a Putin collaborator could poison Navalni without the president knowing?

A.

Of course not, it had to be approved by the Kremlin.

Everyone in Russia understands who Navalni is and what such a decision means and the consequences.

Such a decision cannot have been coordinated or approved by Putin.

Q.

Why now?

A.

We have regional and municipal elections on September 13 and it is the last election before the Duma next year, it is a dress rehearsal.

Alexei [Navalni] is not allowed to run, but he runs the campaign for the smart or tactical vote.

In other words, we coordinate the votes of those who do not know how to express their discomfort with Putin, who do not represent United Russia, although they are rather an opposition of the system.

In each district we try to identify the candidates who have a chance of defeating United Russia and we ask all our supporters to vote for them, regardless of what party they are or what they defend.

If they win, there will come a time when they don't have to subordinate themselves to United Russia.

This smart vote is very dangerous for Putin.

Alexéi is the author of this strategy, he was campaigning in the regions and they thought that they would weaken him if they killed him and took him out of the way.

Q.

Are you afraid to be next on the list?

R.

We do not know what that list is like, or if it exists.

No one who is active in the political opposition in Russia can feel safe, but I always thought and even talked about it with Alexei, that if they decided to kill someone, his lieutenants, people like me, we would be natural targets.

Because the damage to the organization would be the same, but there would be no international reaction because we are not as famous as him.

The Kremlin took the most radical option, but it seems that they did not calculate all the consequences.

Q.

What happened in those crucial hours in the Navalni were you in a hospital in Siberia?

Why did Putin end up accepting the transfer?

R.

First of all, because of local and international pressure, thanks to many European leaders, not just Angela Merkel.

There were 150 people on the plane she collapsed into and the pressure exploded from the start.

But also because they failed.

There were many problems at the executive level.

They held it for 24 more hours because maybe someone told them that the Novichok was undetectable 48 hours later and that was probably the case when it was created in the Soviet Union in the eighties, but now it is not.

There are other technical means that did not exist before.

International pressure was mounting and they knew they had to let him out.

Q.

How should European leaders react?

R.

Merkel has been very tough and I hope the rest of the European leaders are too.

I hope that there is an independent international investigation, that there is pressure on Putin to be investigated.

I don't think Putin will ever admit it, because they have said too many times that there was no poison and I don't see how they can correct it now.

What the Europeans could really do is go for Putin's money in Europe.

In Italy, in France, in Austria, in Germany and in the United Kingdom.

That would be a real punishment.

P.

Sanctions are considered.

A.

We do not ask for sanctions.

In the Kremlin, every time they hear about sanctions, they uncork a bottle of champagne.

Sanctions are good for dictators.

He supports the Kremlin's rhetoric that the whole world is against us, that the EU and the US want to destroy our economy and we have to unite around our leader Putin.

No dictator was overthrown with sanctions, on the contrary, they help his propaganda.

Furthermore, it is very difficult to design sanctions so that they only affect dictators and not the population.

P.

The Kremlin says it is open to dialogue and asks Germany for more information.

A.

The Kremlin's strategy is always the same.

Make as much noise as possible, generate disinformation until the truth is diluted.

The Kremlin pretends that the most obvious version does not exist to create hundreds of alternative versions and that the common person is confused and does not understand anything.

Because they don't care what people think in other countries, they care about national opinion.

There are even people who deny that he is in Charité [the Berlin hospital where Navalni is admitted].

They are all

.

It's not about sounding reasonable, but about making as much noise as possible.

Q.

What does the Kremlin fear from an organization like yours?

A.

The political situation may appear stable in Russia, with Putin in power for 20 years and no one doubting that Putin has the necessary tools to remain in power until he dies.

But at the same time, everyone knows that the purchasing power of households has not stopped decreasing for eight years and that Putin's popularity falls and Navalni's grows.

There is a long way to go before those two trends intersect, but they don't want to wait for that moment to come and it's too late.

Q.

Can your organization function without Navalni?

A.

Yes, it works now.

We have more than 200 employees.