The Russian opposition leader posed as a national security agent during a 45-minute phone call to extract information from a spy who was reportedly involved in Navalny's August poisoning.
During his year-end news conference, the Russian president glibly brushed aside international suspicions that Kremlin agents were behind the attempted assassination of the leading opposition figure.
An investigation by Bellingcat, an Internet research organization, and other media outlets, revealed that for years, Russian agents secretly followed Alexei Navalny.
It is "reasonable to conclude," the EU says, "that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny was only possible with the consent of the Presidential Executive Office."
In an interview, the Russian opposition leader accuses President Vladimir Putin of ordering the attack with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. A Kremlin spokesperson calls the accusation groundless.
A spokeswoman says the Russian opposition leader's bank accounts were frozen and his Moscow apartment "seized" in connection with a libel suit while he was in a coma after poisoning by a nerve agent.
Navalny spent 32 days in Berlin's Charité Hospital, 24 of them in intensive care. Independent lab tests in three countries confirmed he had been poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Novichok is the same nerve agent used in a 2018 attack in Britain on former KGB spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. A German government spokesman says the evidence is "without a doubt."
The Russian opposition figure has been in a medically induced coma since last week. He is in serious but stable condition, the Charité hospital in Berlin said on Friday.
Alexei Navalny, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critics, was poisoned by an unknown substance from a group of drugs that affect the nervous system, doctors say.
Doctors in Siberia have reversed their initial decision, that it would be risky to move Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny His family says Navalny was poisoned.
Navalny is unconscious and on a ventilator, according to his spokeswoman. The Vladimir Putin critic became ill during a commercial flight. His personal doctor wants him to be treated in Europe.
Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, runs an anti-corruption organization that Russian authorities accuse of being a "foreign agent." This week, he hit back.
Lyubov Sobol's tenacity in standing up to the authorities, combined with a savvy use of social media, has put her at the center of attention as a new protest leader.
Upon his release, Alexei Navalny said in an apparently sarcastic Instagram post that the prison was getting upgrades for soccer fans: LCD TVs and three-course meals.
Navalny says he faces jail time for organizing illegal protests. It's not the first arrest this year for the Kremlin critic, who has been barred from running in this year's presidential election.
The popular 41-year-old lawyer is calling for a boycott of the March 18 presidential election, which he says is rigged. He says Putin's regime is built on making Russians believe nothing can change.
Russian police dragged opposition leader Alexei Navalny from a march in Moscow and carried him feet-first into a van. Earlier Russian authorities appeared to raid his headquarters,
Alexei Navalny will not be allowed to run for president in Russia's election next year, officials announced on Monday. Navalny, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, has vowed to appeal.
Novosibirsk is a key center of support for opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "I believed that Putin would make things better," a protester said. But "he made things better only for a few people."
!["I assert that [Vladimir] Putin was behind the crime, and I have no other explanation for what happened," Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny told the German magazine <em>Der Spiegel.</em>](https://knpr.org/sites/default/files/public/styles/thumbnail/public/images/npr-story/919141465_149994421.jpg?itok=-5BGQ1I_ "Navalny Instagram via AP")
