A joint investigation by The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN with the participation of Der Spiegel established the names and titles of FSB employees who could have poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny with "Novichok"
ak, telephone billings and travel data helped journalists establish that the operation to poison Navalny was carried out by a group of at least eight FSB operatives from a secret division of the agency operating under the cover of the Institute of Forensic Science of the FSB (a.k.a. NII-2 of the FSB or v/h 34435).
While the official purpose of NII-2 is to conduct examinations, former Soviet and Russian intelligence officers who defected to the West said that the institute also “runs a secret laboratory that in Soviet times produced poisons used to kill Western diplomats, Ukrainian nationalists, and Soviet defectors", the investigators assure.
Analyzing metadata of calls and comparing them with offline databases, as well as with data from open sources, journalists established the identities of 15 people from the Institute of Criminalistics of the FSB associated with poisoning operations, and at least 8 of them, including the head of the institute, Colonel Stanislav Makshakov , participated in the assassination attempt on Navalny:
Stanislav Makshakov
Born on March 25, 1966. Colonel, military scientist, who previously worked at the State Institute of Organic Synthesis Technology in the closed military town of Shikhany-1 (military unit 61469). Before the official termination of the Russian chemical weapons program in 2017, this military institute conducted research and development of new forms of chemical weapons, including nerve agents of the "Novichok" type.
Oleg Tayakin ("Tarasov")
He was born on December 6, 1980. A senior member of the Navalny poisoning team, usually coordinating the actions of other officers and working mainly from the central office at Akademik Varga, 2a. He served at the "Bely Ugol" base of the Special Service of the FSB in Essentuki, as well as in military unit 03523 of the Space Forces. In 2004, he graduated from the Pirogov Medical Academy in Moscow. Before joining the Institute of Criminalistics of the FSB, he worked as a doctor.
Alexey Alexandrov ("Frolov")
He was born on June 16, 1981. In 2006, he graduated from a medical institute in Moscow and worked as an emergency physician, and then as a military doctor, and began serving in the FSB in 2013. Aleksandrov is apparently a key operative involved in two attempts to poison Navalny in 2020.
Ivan Osypov ("Spyridonov")
He was born on August 21, 1976. Doctor He left social networks in 2012, apparently, that's when he joined the FSB.
Konstantin Kudryavtsev ("Sokolov")
Born on April 11, 1979. He served in a military unit in Shikhany. He graduated from the Russian Academy of Military Chemical and Biological Defense before starting work at the Institute of Forensics of the FSB.
Alexey Kryvoshchekov
Born on April 11, 1979. Before joining the FSB in 2008, he served in the Ministry of Defense.
Mikhail Shvets ("Stepanov")
Born on May 3, 1977. He is officially registered at the address "Trubetskaya Street, 116, Balashikha" - this is the address of the Center for Special Operations of the FSB. Let us remind you that Vadym Krasykov (Sokolov) trained there, at the base of the Central Security Service of the FSB in Balashikha, just before he went to Germany, where in August 2019 he killed the refugee Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. Telephone metadata shows that Shvets spends part of his time in the laboratory on Akademika Varga Street, and part of it at the base of the Central Security Service of the FSB.
Vladimir Panyaev
He was born on November 25, 1980 in Serdobsk, Penza region. Before joining the Institute of Criminalistics of the FSB, he worked in the border service of the FSB, then became a co-founder of a company selling antibacterial lamps. It may or may not be a coincidence, but he lives in the same house as Alexei Navalny. After his poisoning, his registration address was changed to the headquarters of the FSB at 1 Lubyanka.
It is reported that an analysis of the previous trips of members of this group of poisoners shows that they began monitoring Alexei Navalny at least since January 2017, however, after the CEC denied Navalny registration for the presidential elections in December 2017, the monitoring temporarily stopped .
In 2020, journalists note, the hunt for Navalny resumed in full force.
As a reminder, earlier The Times newspaper, citing its sources, reported that when Navalny was in a coma in an Omsk hospital, a second attempt was made to poison him. According to the publication, for this purpose, employees of the Russian special services entered the hospital.
So, on August 20, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny felt unwell during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The plane was urgently landed in Omsk, where the oppositionist was hospitalized. He was in a coma. Omsk doctors conducted a number of analyzes and came to the conclusion that the event was not poisoning. On August 22, Navalny was transferred to Germany for treatment. Then he was put into an artificial coma.
On September 2, the official representative of the German government announced that traces of poison from the "Novichok" group were found in the body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
On September 7, the opposition leader was brought out of a coma.
On September 23, Navalny was discharged from the Berlin Charite clinic, where he spent 32 days.
Experts in Germany, and then in other countries, also came to the conclusion that Navalny was poisoned by a substance from the "Novichok" group. EU countries called on Moscow to investigate the incident. They also imposed sanctions against Russian officials who, in their opinion, could have been involved in the attempt on Navalny.
Navalny is convinced that he was poisoned by the special services on the instructions of the Kremlin.
The Russian authorities deny involvement in the poisoning. The representative of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, and Russian doctors assure that no poisons were found in the oppositionist's body in Russia. Moscow declared its readiness to cooperate with Germany to find out the circumstances of the incident. The Kremlin also accused the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons of bias.
