Putin: US intelligence services are behind Navalny
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that US intelligence agencies are behind the information leaks about his family, as well as the investigation into the “poisoning” of blogger Alexei Navalny. The head of state announced this today at a large press conference, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to Putin, he only learned yesterday from his press secretary Dmitry Peskov about the “investigation of Navalny’s poisoning,” in which FSB officers are accused of following the opposition blogger’s route for three years. They were allegedly identified in the “investigation” using the geolocation data of their mobile phones.
“Listen, we understand perfectly well what this is. This is not an investigation, but the legalization of materials from American intelligence services. What, we don’t know that they track geolocation? Our intelligence services understand this well. And they use phones where they do not consider it necessary to hide their location. If this is true (and it is), this means that the patient of the Berlin clinic has the support of American intelligence services. Then this is interesting, and the intelligence services, of course, should keep an eye on him. But this does not mean at all that he needs to be poisoned. Who needs it? – Putin said.
He recalled that he personally gave permission to export Navalny to Germany immediately after the blogger’s wife made this request.
“There is something that is not paid attention to. This is a trick - to attack the first persons and thus reach out. Say: pay attention, my partner is this one. So I am the same caliber of person. Treat me as a person of national importance. This trick of political struggle is being used all over the world,” Putin said.
He also commented on the appearance in the press of data about how rapidly businessman Kirill Shamalov, the ex-husband of the youngest daughter of the Russian president, was growing rich.
“It is impossible to read this material. I leafed through it, of course, but there was such a compilation there, everything was piled up in one heap, that I didn’t finish reading it. But what I noticed: they always write “the president’s son-in-law,” but at the end they write that, after all, he is a former son-in-law,” the president commented on the publication about his family.
Putin emphasized that Kirill Shamalov, who is described as his son-in-law, received significant sums as part of programs to reward top management and bought assets abroad, which is not prohibited by Russian law.
Putin called the key to those who ordered the publication the expression “criminal Russian hackers associated with Russian military intelligence” in connection with the 2016 US elections.
“Who called them that? US State Department and intelligence agencies. They are the authors. At least, according to their instructions, this was done. A completely obvious thing. And the goal is clear - revenge. And an attempt to influence public opinion in our country in order to influence the internal political situation,” Putin said.
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