RUSSIA has today rejected evidence from Britain that the Kremlin killed Alexei Navalny with a toxin from a dart frog.
The UK, joined by France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, released a report, proving that the Russian opposition leader was fatally poisoned in a Siberian gulag two years ago.
Russia first called the accusation a “planted story” and now Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, blasted the accusation as “biased.”
“We, naturally, reject such accusations,” he said. “We disagree with them.
“We consider them biased and unfounded. And, in fact, we resolutely reject them.”
Putin’s propagandists also went into overdrive to dismiss the findings from scientists at Porton Down, based on samples from Navalny’s body.
Prominent Kremlin champion Vladimir Solovyov mocked the report and compared it to a Sherlock Holmes tale.
“Did you know that the most terrifying weapon in the Red Army and the KGB’s arsenal is tropical frog poison?” he said.
“Did you know that in our prisons, to get rid of undesirables, they [are poisoned]? These idiots, in my opinion, have simply read too much Conan Doyle.
“This is like Sherlock Holmes’ stories. I mean, they’re amazing people [the British].
“Because the important thing is that no proof is needed. Tropical frog poison!”
Another propagandist, Alexander Sosnovsky, appeared on Russian state TV, saying that the alleged poison was from different types of poison frogs.
Their accusations come a day after US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, called the report “troubling”, adding that the White House had no reason to question it.
When asked why the United States did not join the statement, Rubio said this was an endeavour of theirs.
“Those countries came to that conclusion,” he said. “They coordinated that.
“We chose – Doesn’t mean we disagree with the outcome. We just, it wasn’t, our endeavour. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing with based on the intelligence they’ve gathered.”
“We’re not disputing or getting into a fight with these countries over it. But it was their report, and they put that out there.”
The full results are slated to be submitted to the United Nations’ chemical weapons watchdog – the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Lyudmila Navalnaya, the critic’s mother said the report “confirms what we knew from the very beginning.”
She said while visiting her son’s grave in Moscow on Monday – the second anniversary of his death: “We knew that our son did not simply die in prison, he was murdered.”
Yulia Navalnaya, the Russian dissident’s widow, directly accused Putin of ordering her husband’s assassination and called him a “murderer”.
She said: “Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
