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image captionAlexei Navalny was released from hospital in September after more than a month of treatment
A joint investigation published on Monday has blamed Russian intelligence agents for the poisoning of top Russia opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
In August Mr Navalny - a staunch critic of President Vladimir Putin - was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.
He has accused Mr Putin of ordering the attack, something the Kremlin denies.
But investigative journalists at Bellingcat and Russian news site The Insider have now published a report implicating FSB agents in the incident.
According to the investigation - compiled with the help of US broadcaster CNN and German paper Der Spiegel - a group of operatives from the Russian state intelligence organisation tailed Mr Navalny for three years.
– were shown to have been in close communication with GRU operatives linked to the two overseas assassination attempts using military-grade toxins. SC Signal, formally engaged in developing sports nutrition drinks, appears to have focused research into nano-encapsulation; a relatively new technology that could permit a lethal toxin to be “packaged” within a veneer of another substance, allowing both obfuscation and delayed onset of the poison.
On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny collapsed into a coma during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, resulting in an emergency landing and his hospitalization in the town of Omsk. Local doctors and medical specialists flown in from Moscow claimed that they found no signs of severe poisoning. Two days later, Navalny was evacuated to the German
Navalny urges EU to sanction Putin s inner circle
What does this latest evidence show?
The team of agents from the FSB appears to have tried at least two other times to poison him with the chemical weapon Novichok, Navalny claimed in the online video.
The two previous times were unsuccessful because the dosage was too small, Navalny alleged.
He claimed that the hit squad had to be careful not to use too much of the poison because an instant death would have been too easy to investigate.
The investigation identifies FSB operatives Alexey Alexandrov, Ivan Osipov both medical doctors and Vladimir Panyaev who followed Navalny to the Russian city of Tomsk where he was ultimately poisoned, along with others.
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