Is the list of opponents of Vladimir Putin mysteriously poisoned about to grow? The investigations are beginning in Germany, after the Russian investigative media Agentstvo reported this week on health problems encountered by two participants in a meeting of Russian dissidents in Berlin on April 29 and 30.
The investigation has been entrusted to the state protection service, in charge of terrorism and political crimes, a spokesman for the Berlin police confirmed to AFP.
Who are the victims?
The first is presented as a journalist who recently left Russia. The second participant is Natalia Arno, director of the US-based NGO Free Russia Foundation, where she has lived for ten years after having to leave Russia.
What was the reason for the meeting in Berlin?
The two women participated in a meeting of Russian opponents around the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Russian businessman and dissident was jailed in 2003 for "large-scale fraud" and "tax evasion".
After ten years of incarceration on the edge of Siberia, he was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin and released in 2013. Exiled in London since 2015, the man who was the richest man in Russia is a fervent critic of Putin. The ex-oligarch is often presented as a victim of the Russian regime, whose incarceration was politically motivated.
How did the events unfold?
The journalist sensed unspecified health problems during the event, but she suggests that they may have started before. The media Agentstvo adds that she then went to the Berlin Charité hospital where Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, victim of Novichok poisoning in August 2020, had been treated.
Natalia Arno reported "first strange symptoms" that appeared during her trip to Berlin where she attended the conference, she said in a Facebook post this week.
The opponent then traveled to Prague, Czech Republic, for a series of public meetings on Russia. It was after these meetings that his condition worsened.
" READ ALSO Novichok, polonium, dioxin: these poisons that target the "enemies" of the Kremlin
She said she experienced "strange symptoms" and "sharp pains," which worsened on her flight back to the United States, with "pronounced numbness." She was medically treated on the spot.
The director of the Free Russia Foundation also said she found the door to her hotel room open in Prague and smelled "a strange and pungent smell of cheap perfume."
"There are suspicions that I was poisoned with a nerve agent (poisons attacking the nervous system of which Novichok is a part)," she said. Some symptoms still persist today, although she says she feels "better."
What is Novichok?
Novichok (literally "new kid" in Russian) was specifically developed for military purposes by Soviet researchers in the 1970s.
This is a group of nerve agents, considered five to ten times more lethal than the other two best-known nerve agents: sarin gas and VX. Poison was added to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' list of illicit substances in 2019.
This poison, which exists in liquid and solid versions, attacks the nervous system, preventing it from communicating with the muscles, which can cause death by choking or cardiac arrest. Victims who survive often have irreversible sequelae in the brain.
What are the previous cases of Novichok poisoning?
In recent years, there have been several poison attacks abroad and in Russia against ruling dissidents.
Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny was the victim in 2020 of an assassination attempt with Novichok poison (its use has been confirmed by European laboratories), which he accuses the Russian regime of being the sponsor.
" READ ALSO Navalny case: the ingestion of Novichok credible according to a Russian linked to the creation of the poison
Novichok poison was also used in the 2018 attempted murder of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. According to the British authorities, "only the Russian state had the technical means, the experience and the motive" to carry out this operation.
The case had further exacerbated the already difficult relations between London and Moscow since the death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by polonium-210, an extremely toxic radioactive substance, in 2006 in the British capital.
Each time, Moscow denied any responsibility of its secret services.
